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Ruth of The 

u. s. A. 






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Ruth crouched beside Gerry, and shot through the wreckage at the 
circling German plane 


[Page 173 ] 


feuttj of ttir 

W. ft. a. 


BY 

EDWIN BALMER 


ILLUSTRATED BY 

HAROLD H. BETTS 



CHICAGO 

A. C. McCLURG & CO. 


1919 




Copyright 

A. C. McClurg & Co. 

1919 

Copyright 

The Tribune Company 
1918 

Published March, 1919 
Copyrighted in Great Britain 






W. F. HALL PRINTING COMPANY, CHICAGO 


APR -3 1919 

©CI.A51292 4 

A'- v* 


>/ 

V 

V 





THE MEMORY OF 

illp Jfatfter 

AN ENGLISHMAN AND AN 
AMERICAN 



CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I A Beggar and a Passport i 

II The Wand of War . 17 

III The New Role 30 

IV At Mrs. Corliss' 42 

V “You're Not Like Anyone Else" ... 48 

VI “We're Fighting” 70 

VII “ One of Our Own ! " 91 

VIII France no 

IX To Picardy 127 

X The Great Attack 141 

XI The Resistance 157 

XII “ How Could This Happen ? " 175 

XIII Byrne Arrives 197 

XIV Full Confession 212 

XV Gerry's Problem 229 

XVI Into Germany 244 

XVII The Road to Lauengratz 260 

XVIII The Message in Cipher 274 

XIX The Underground Railway . . . . . 291 

XX An Officers' Prison 305 

XXI The Raid on the Schloss 323 

XXII “The War's Over" 348 


/ 


\ 


\ 




ILLUSTRATIONS 


Ruth crouched beside Gerry, and shot through the 
wreckage at the circling German plane Frontispiece 


She looked away, half expecting the sound of the music, 
and the roses, and palms, and Gerry Hull would 
vanish 46 

Gerry was there at the door of her cell; another man 
was with him; a friend 334 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


CHAPTER I 

A BEGGAR AND A PASSPORT 

I T WAS the day for great destinies. Germany was 
starving; yet German armies, stronger and better pre- 
pared than ever before, were about to annihilate the 
British and the French. Austria, crumbling, was secretly 
suing for peace ; yet Austria was awaiting only the melt- 
ing of snow in the mountain passes before striking for 
Venice and Padua. Russia was reorganizing to fight 
again on the side of the allies ; Russia, prostrate, had be- 
come a mere reservoir of manpower for the Hohenzol- 
lerns. The U-boats were beaten ; the U-boats were sweep- 
ing the seas. America had half a million men in France; 
America had only “ symbolical battalions ” parading in 
Paris. 

A thousand lies balanced a thousand denials; the 
pointer of credulity swung toward the lies again; and so 
it swung and swung with everything uncertain but the 
one fact which seemed, on this day, perfectly plain — 
American effort had collapsed. America not only had 
failed to aid her allies during the nine months since she 
had entered the war; she seemed to have ceased even to 
care for herself. Complete proof of this was that for five 


i 


2 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


days now industries had been shut down, offices were 
empty, furnaces cold. 

Upon that particular Tuesday morning, the fifth day 
of this halt, a girl named Ruth Alden awoke in an under- 
heated room at an Ontario Street boarding house — 
awoke, merely one of the millions of the inconsiderable in 
Chicago as yet forbidden any extraordinary transaction 
either to her credit or to her debit in the mighty accounts of 
the world war. If it be true that tremendous fates ap- 
proaching cast their shadows before, she was unconscious 
of such shadows as she arose that morning. To be sure, 
she reminded herself when she was dressing that this was 
the day that Gerry Hull was arriving home from France; 
and she thought about him a good deal ; but this was only 
as thousands of other romance-starved girls of twenty- 
two or thereabouts, who also were getting up by gaslight 
in underheated rooms at that January dawn, were think- 
ing about Gerry Hull. That was, Ruth would like, if 
she could, to welcome him home to his own people and 
to thank him that day, in the name of his city and of his 
country, for what he had done. But this was to her then 
merely a wild, unrealizable fantasy. 

What was actual and immediately before her was that 
Mr. Sam Hilton — the younger of the Hilton brothers, 
for whom she was office manager — had a real estate deal 
on at his office. He was to be there at eight o’clock, whether 
the office was heated or not, and she also was to be there 
to draw deeds and releases and so on ; for someone named 
Cady who was over draft age, but had himself accepted 
by an engineer regiment, was sacrificing a fine factory 
property for a quick sale and Sam Hilton, who was in 


A BEGGAR AND A PASSPORT 


3 


class one but still hoped somehow to avoid being called, 
was snapping up the bargain. 

So Ruth hurried downtown much as usual upon that 
cold morning; and she felt only a little more conscious 
contempt for Sam Hilton — and for herself — as she sat 
beside him from eight until after nine, with her great 
coat on and with her hands pulled up in her sleeves to 
keep them warm while he schemed and reschemed to 
make a certain feature of his deal with the patriotic Cady 
more favorable to himself. He had tossed the morning 
paper upon his desk in front of him with the columns 
folded up which displayed Gerry Hull’s picture in his uni- 
form and which told about Gerry Hull’s arriving that 
morning and about his service in France. Thus Ruth 
knew that Sam Hilton had been reading about Lieutenant 
Hull also; and, indeed, Hilton referred to him when he 
had made the last correction upon the contract and was in 
good humor and ready to put business aside for a few 
minutes and be personal. 

“Gerry Hull’s come home today from France, I see. 
Some fighter, that boy ! ” he exclaimed with admiration. 
“Ain’t he? ” 

Ruth gazed at Hilton with wonder. She could have 
understood a man like Sam Hilton if he refused to read 
at all about Gerry Hull; or she could have understood if, 
reading, Sam Hilton denied admiration. But how could 
a young man know about Lieutenant Hull and admire 
him and feel no personal reproach at himself staying safe 
and satisfied and out of “ it ” ? 

“ Some flier ! ” he was going on with his enthusiastic 
praise. “ How many Huns has he got — fourteen? ” 


4 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


Ruth knew the exact number ; but she did not tell him. 
“Lieutenant Hull is here under orders and upon special 
duty,” she said. “They sent him home or he wouldn’t 
be away from the front now.” The blood warmed in her 
face as she delivered this rebuke gently to Sam Hilton. 
He stared at her and the color deepened, staining her 
clear, delicate temples and forehead. “ They had to send 
him here to stir us up.” 

“ What’s the matter with us ? ” Sam Hilton questioned 
with honest lack of concern. Her way of mentioning 
Gerry Hull had not hit him at all ; and he was not seeking 
any answer to his question. He was watching Ruth flush 
and thinking that she was mighty pretty with as much 
color as she had now. He liked her in that coat, too ; for 
the collar of dark fur, though not of good quality, made 
her youthful face even more “high class” looking than 
usual. Sam Hilton spent a great deal of money on his 
own clothes without ever achieving the coveted “class” 
in his appearance; while this girl, who worked for him 
and who had only one outfit that he ever saw, always 
looked right. She came of good people, he knew — little 
town people and not rich, since she had to work and send 
money home; but they were “ refined.” 

Ruth’s bearing and general appearance had pretty well 
assured Sam of this — the graceful way she stood straight 
and held up her head, the oval contour of her face as well 
as the pretty, proud little nose and chin, sweet and yet 
self-reliant like her eyes which were blue and direct and 
thoughtful looking below brown brows. Her hair was 
lighter than her brows and she had a great deal of it; a 
little wavy and a marvelous amber in color and in quality. 


A BEGGAR AND A PASSPORT 


5 


It seemed to take in the sunlight like amber when she 
moved past the window and to let the light become a part 
of it. Her hands which she thrust from her sleeves now 
and clasped in front of her, were small and well shaped, 
though strong and capable too. She had altogether so 
many “ refined ” characteristics that it was only to make 
absolutely certain about her and her family that Sam had 
paid someone ten dollars to verify the information about 
herself which she had supplied when he had employed 
her. This information, fully verified, was that her father, 
who was dead, had been an attorney at Onarga, Illinois, 
where her mother was living with three younger sisters, 
the oldest fourteen. Mrs. Alden took sewing; and since 
Ruth sent home fifteen dollars a week out of her twenty- 
five, the family got along. This fifteen dollars a week, 
totaling seven hundred and eighty a year which the family 
would continue to need and would expect from Ruth or 
from whomever married her, bothered Sam Hilton. But 
he thought this morning that she was worth wasting that 
much for as he watched her small hands clasping, 
watched the light upon her hair and the flush sort of 
fluttering — now fading, now deepening — on her smooth 
cheek. Having banished business from his mind, he was 
thinking about her so intently that it did not occur to him 
that she could be thinking of anyone else. Sam Hilton 
could not easily imagine anyone flushing thus merely be- 
cause she was dreaming of a boy whom she had never 
met and could never meet and who certainly wouldn’t 
know or care anything about her. 

“ He was hurt a couple of weeks ago,” she said, “ or 
probably he wouldn’t have left at all.” 


6 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


That jolted Sam Hilton. It did not bring him any re- 
buke; it simply made him angry that this girl had been 
dreaming all that time about Gerry Hull instead of about 
himself. 

“ Was the Lady Agnes hurt too ? ” he asked. 

“ Hurt ? No.” 

“Well, she’s come with him.” Sam leaned forward 
and referred to the folded newspaper. “‘Lady Agnes 
Ertyle, the daughter of the late Earl of Durran who was 
killed at Ypres in 1915, whose two brothers fell, one at 
Jutland on the Invincible and the other at Cambrai,’ ” he 
read aloud, “ ‘ is also in the party/ ” He skipped down 
the column condensing the following paragraphs : “ She’s 
to stay at his mamma’s house on Astor Street while in 
Chicago. She’s twenty-one ; her picture was printed yes- 
terday. Did you see it ? ” 

This was a direct question; and Ruth had to answer, 
“Yes.” 

“He’s satisfied with her, I should say; but maybe he’s 
come home to look further,” Sam said with his heaviest 
sarcasm. He straightened, satisfied that he had brought 
Ruth back to earth. “ Now I’m going over to see Cady; 
he’ll sign this as it is, I think.” Sam put the draft of the 
contract in his pocket. “ He leaves town this noon, so he 
has to. I’ll be all clear by twelve. You’re clear for the 
day now. Have lunch with me, Miss Alden?” 

Ruth refused him quietly. He often asked her for 
lunch and she always refused; so he was used to it. 

“All right. You’re free for the day,” he repeated 
generously and, without more ceremony, he hurried off 
to Cady. 


A BEGGAR AND A PASSPORT 


7 


Ruth waited until he had time to leave the building 
before she closed the office and went down the stairs. 
She stepped out to the street, only one girl among thou- 
sands that morning dismissed from bleak offices — one of 
thousands to whom it seemed ignominious that day, when 
all the war was going so badly and when Gerry Hull was 
arriving from France, to go right back to one’s room and 
do nothing more for the war than to knit until it was 
time to go to bed and sleep to arise next morning to come 
down to make out more deeds and contracts for men like 
Sam Hilton. 

Had it been a month or two earlier, Ruth again would 
have made the rounds of the headquarters where girls 
gave themselves for real war work; but now she knew 
that further effort would be fruitless. Everyone in Chi- 
cago, who possessed authority to select girls for work in 
France, knew her registration card by heart — her name, 
her age, the fact that she had a high-school education. 
They- were familiar with the occupations in which she 
claimed experience — office assistant; cooking; care of 
children (had she not taken care of her sisters?); first 
aid ; can drive motor car ; operate typewriter. Everyone 
knew that her health was excellent ; her sight and hearing 
perfect. She would go “ anywhere ” ; she would start “ at 
any time.” But everyone also knew that answer which 
truth had obliged her to write to the challenge, “ What 
persons dependent upon you, if any?” So everyone 
knew that though Ruth Alden would give herself to any 
work, someone had to find, above her expenses, seven 
hundred and eighty dollars a year for her family. 

Accordingly she could think of nothing better to do 


8 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


this morning than to join the throng of those who were 
going to Michigan Avenue and to the building where the 
British and French party, with which Gerry Hull was 
traveling, would be welcomed to the city. Ruth had no 
idea of being admitted to the building; she merely stood 
in the crowd upon the walk ; but close to where she stood, 
a limousine halted. A window of the car was down ; and 
suddenly Ruth saw Gerry Hull right before her. She 
knew him at once from his picture; he was tall and active 
looking, even though sitting quiet in the car ; he was bend- 
ing forward a bit and the sudden, slight motions of his 
straight, lithe shoulders and the quick turn of his head 
as he gazed out, told of the vigor and impetuousness 
which — Ruth knew — were his. 

He had a clear, dark skin; his hair and brows were 
dark; his eyes, blue and observant and interested. He 
had the firm, determined chin of a fighter; his mouth was 
pleasant and likable. He was younger looking than his 
pictures had made him appear ; not younger than his age, 
which Ruth knew was twenty- four. Indeed, he looked 
older than four and twenty; yet one could not say that 
he looked two years older or five or ten; the maturity 
which war had brought Gerry Hull was not the sort which 
one could reckon in years. It made one — at least it 
made Ruth — pulse all at once with amazing feeling for 
him, with a strange mixture of anger that such a boy 
must have experienced that which had so seared his soul, 
and of pride in him that he had sought the experience. 
He was a little excited now at being home again, Ruth 
thought, in this city where his grandfather had made his 
fortune, where his father had died and where he, himself, 


A BEGGAR AND A PASSPORT 


9 


had spent his boyhood ; he turned to point out something 
to the girl who was seated beside him ; so Ruth gazed at 
her and recognized her, too. She was Lady Agnes 
Ertyle, young and slight and very lovely with her brown 
hair and gray eyes and fair, English complexion and 
straight, pure features. She had something too of that 
maturity, not of years, which Gerry Hull had; she was 
a little tired and not excited as was he. But for all that, 
she was beautiful and very young and not at all a strange 
creation in spite of her title and in spite of all that her 
family — her father and her brothers and she herself — 
had done in Belgium and in France. Indeed, she was only 
a girl of twenty-two or three. So Ruth quite forgot her- 
self in the feeling of rebuke which this view of Gerry 
Hull and Lady Agnes brought to her. They were not 
much older or intrinsically different from herself and they 
had already done so much ; and she — nothing ! 

She was so close to them that they had to observe her ; 
and the English girl nodded to her friendlily and a little 
surprised. Gerry Hull seemed not surprised; but he did 
not nod; he just gazed back at her. 

“ What ought I be doing ? ” Ruth heard her voice ap- 
pealing to them. 

Lady Agnes Ertyle attempted no reply to this extraor- 
dinary query; but Gerry Hull’s eyes were studying, her 
and he seemed, in some way, to understand her perplexity 
and dismay. 

“Anyone can trust you to find out ! ” he replied to her 
aloud, yet as if in comment to himself rather than in an- 
swer to her. The car moved and left Ruth with that — 
with Gerry Hull’s assurance to himself that she could be 


10 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


trusted to discover what she should do. She did not com- 
pletely understand what he meant ; for she did not know 
what he had been thinking when she suddenly thought 
out aloud before him and surprised him into doing the 
same. Nevertheless this brief encounter stirred and 
stimulated her; she could not meekly return to her room 
after this; so, when the crowd broke up, she went over 
to State Street. 

The wide, wind-swept way, busy and bleak below the 
towering sheer of the great department stores, the hotels 
and office buildings on either hand seemed to Ruth never 
so sordid and self-concerned as upon this morning. Here 
and there a flag flapped from a rope stretched across the 
street or from a pole pointing obliquely to the sky; but 
these merely acknowledged formal recognition of a state 
of war; they were not symbols of any evident perform- 
ance of act of defense. The people who passed either 
entirely ignored these flags or noticed them dully, with- 
out the slightest show of feeling. Many of these people, 
as Ruth knew, must have sons or brothers in the training 
camps ; a few might possess sons in the regiments already 
across the water; but if Ruth observed any of these, she 
was unable to distinguish them this morning from the 
throng of the indifferent going about their private and 
petty preoccupations with complete engrossment. Like- 
wise was she powerless to discriminate those — not few 
in number — who mingled freely in the groups passing 
under the flags but who gazed up, not with true indiffer- 
ence, but with hotly hostile reactions. 

The great majority even of the so-called Germans in 
Chicago were loyal to America, Ruth knew; but from the 


A BEGGAR AND A PASSPORT 


11 


many hundred thousand who, before the American dec- 
laration of war, had sympathized with and supported the 
cause of the Fatherland, there were thousands now who 
had become only more fervent and reckless in their al- 
legiance to Germany since the United States had joined 
its enemies — thousands who put the advantage of the 
Fatherland above every individual consideration and who, 
unable to espouse their cause now openly, took to clandes- 
tine schemes of ugly and treacherous conception. Thought 
of them came to Ruth as she passed two men speaking in 
low tones to each other, speaking in English but with 
marked Teutonic accent; they stared at her sharply and 
with a different scrutiny from that which men ordinarily 
gave when estimating Ruth’s face and figure. One of 
them seemed about to speak to her; but, glancing at the 
other people on the walk, he instantly reconsidered and 
passed by with his companion. Ruth flushed and hurried 
on down the street until suddenly she realized that one of 
the men who had stared at her, had passed her and was 
walking ahead of her, glancing back. 

She halted, then, a little excited and undecided what 
was best to do. The man went on, evidently not ventur- 
ing the boldness of stopping, too; and while Ruth re- 
mained undecided, a street beggar seized the opportunity 
of offering her his wares. 

This man was a cripple who, in spite of the severe cold 
of the morning, was seated on the walk with his crutches 
before him; he pretended to be a pencil vendor and dis- 
played in his mittened hand an open box half full of 
pencils; and he had a pile of unopened boxes at his side. 
He had taken station at that particular spot on State 


12 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


Street where most people must pass on their way to and 
from the chief department stores; but his trade evidently 
had been so slack this morning that he felt need of more 
aggressive mendicancy. He scrambled a few yards up 
the walk to where Ruth had halted and, gazing up at her, 
he jerked the edge of her coat. 

“Buy a pencil, lady?” 

Ruth looked down at the man, who was very cold and 
ill-dressed and pitiful; she took a dime from her purse 
and proffered it to him. He gazed up at her gratefully 
and with keen, questioning eyes; and, instead of taking a 
pencil from his open box, he picked up one of the un- 
opened boxes which he had carried with him. 

“ Take a box, lady,” he pleaded, squirming with a pain- 
ful effort which struck a pang of pity through Ruth; it 
made her think, not alone of his crippled agony, but the 
pain of the thousands — of the millions from the battle 
fields. 

Ruth returned her dime to her purse and took out a 
dollar bill ; the beggar thrust the mittened fingers of his 
left hand between his teeth, jerked off the ragged mitten 
and grabbed the dollar bill. 

“ That pays for two boxes,” he said, gazing again up 
at Ruth keenly. 

“Til take two,” Ruth said, accepting the sale which 
the man had forced rather than deciding it herself. 

He selected two boxes from the pile at his side and, 
glancing at her face sharply once more, he handed her 
the boxes and thanked her. She thrust the boxes into her 
muff and hurried on. 

When she realized the strangeness of this transaction a 


A BEGGAR AND A PASSPORT 


13 


few moments later, it seemed to have been wholly due to 
the beggar’s having taken advantage of her excitement 
after meeting Gerry Hull and her uneasiness at being fol- 
lowed by the German. She had no use for two boxes of 
cheap pencils and she could not afford to give a dollar to 
a street cripple who probably was an impostor. She felt 
that she had acted quite crazily; now she had to take a 
North State Street car to return to her room. 

She had been saving, out of her money which she kept 
for herself, a ridiculous little fund to enable her perhaps 
to take advantage of a chance to “ do ” something some 
day; now because Lieutenant Hull had spoken kindly to 
her, she had flung away a dollar. She tried to keep her 
thought from her foolishness; and she succeeded in this 
readily by reviewing all the slight incident of her meeting 
with Gerry Hull. She had known something about him 
ever since she was a little girl, and pictures of him — a 
little boy with his grandfather — and articles about his 
grandfather and about him, too, appeared in the Chicago 
newspaper which her father read. Ruth could recall her 
father telling her about the great Andrew Hull, how he 
had come to Chicago as a poor boy and had made himself 
one of the greatest men in the industrial life of the nation; 
how he owned land and city buildings and great factories 
and railroads ; and the reason that the newspapers so often 
printed the picture of the little boy was because some day 
he would own them all. 

And Ruth knew that this had come true ; and that the 
little boy, whose bold, likeable face had looked out upon 
her from the pictures; the tall, handsome, athletic and 
reckless youth who had gone to school in the East and, 


14 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


later, in England had become the possessor of great 
power and wealth in Chicago but instead of being at all 
spoiled by it, he was a clean, brave young man — a soldier 
having offered himself and having fought in the most 
perilous of all services and having fought well ; a soldier 
who was a little flushed and excited about being home 
again among his people and who had spoken friendlily 
to her. 

Ruth reached her room, only remembering the pencil 
boxes when she dropped them from her muff upon her 
table. The solid sound they made — not rattling as pen- 
cils should — caused her to tear the pasted paper from 
about one box. She had bought not even pencils but 
only boxes packed with paper. Now she had the cover 
off and was staring at the contents. A new fifty dollar 
bank note was on top. Underneath that was another; 
below that, another — others. They made a packet 
enclosed in a strip such as banks use and this was de- 
nominated $1,000.00. There were twenty fifty-dollar 
notes in this packet. 

Ruth lifted it out; she rubbed her eyes and lifted out 
another packet labeled one thousand dollars made up of 
ten bills of one hundred dollars each ; on the bottom were 
five one hundred dollar notes, not fastened together. The 
box held nothing else. 

Her pulses pounded and beat in her head; her hands 
touching the money went hot, went cold. This money 
was real; but her obtaining it must be a mistake. The 
box must have been the beggar’s bank which he had kept 
beside him ; therefore his money had no meaning for her. 
But now the cripple’s insistence upon halting her, his 


A BEGGAR AND A PASSPORT 


15 


keen observation of her, his slowness at last to make the 
sale, stirred swift instincts of doubt. She seized and tore 
open the other box which she had bought. 

No pencils in it; nor money. It held printed or en- 
graved papers, folded and refolded tightly. One huge 
paper was on top, displaying bright red stamps and a rib- 
bon and seals. This was an official government docu- 
ment; a passport to France! The picture of the holder 
was pasted upon a corner, stamped with the seal of the 
United States; and it was her picture! In strange 
clothes ; but herself ! 

For the instant, as things swam before her in her ex- 
citement, there came to Ruth the Cinderella wonder 
which a girl, who has been really a little child once, can 
never quite cease to believe — the wonder of a wish by 
magic made true. The pencils in the beggar’s boxes had 
been changed by her purchase of them to money for her 
and a passport to France. And for this magic, Gerry 
Hull was in some way responsible. She had appealed to 
him ; he had spoken to her and thenceforth all things she 
touched turned to fairy gold — or better than gold; 
American bank notes and a passport to France! 

Then the moment of Ruth, the little girl and the 
dreamer, was gone; and Ruth, the business woman com- 
petent to earn twenty-five dollars a week, examined what 
she held in her hand. As she made out the papers more 
clearly, her heart only beat faster and harder ; her hands 
went moist and trembled and her breath was pent in by 
presence of the great challenge which had come to her, 
which was not fairy at all but very real and mortal and 
which put at stake her life and honor but which offered 


16 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


her something to “do” beyond even her dreams. For 
the picture upon the passport was not of her but only of 
a girl very much like her; the name, as inscribed in the 
body of the passport and as written in hand across the 
picture and under the seal of the United States, was not 
her own but of someone named Cynthia Gail ; and along 
with the passport was an unattached paper covered with 
small, distinct handwriting of a man relating who Cynthia 
Gail was and what the recipient of this money and this 
passport was expected to do. This paper like the pass- 
port was complete and untorn. There was besides a page 
of correspondence paper, of good quality, written upon 
both sides in the large, free handwriting of a girl — the 
same hand which had signed the photograph and the pass- 
port, “ Cynthia Gail.” 

Ruth read these papers and she went to her door and 
locked it, she went to her window and peered cautiously 
out. If anyone had followed her, he was not now in evi- 
dence. The old, dilapidated street was deserted as usual 
at this time and on such a day except for a delivery truck 
speeding past, a woman or two on the way to the car line, 
and a few pallid children venturing out in the cold. Lis- 
tening for sounds below, Ruth heard no unusual move- 
ments; so she drew far back from the window with the 
money and with the passport and with the explanatory 
paper and the letter which she laid before her and ex- 
amined most carefully again. 


CHAPTER II 


THE WAND OF WAR 

T HE man who had formed the small, distinct char- 
acters covering the paper of instructions had written 
in English; but while he was quite familiar with 
English script, it was evident that he had written with 
the deliberate pains of a person who realizes the need of 
differentiating his letters from the formation natural to 
him. That formation, clearly, was German script. Like 
everyone else, Ruth knew German families; and, like 
many other American girls who had been in high schools 
before the outbreak of the war, she had chosen German 
for a modern language course. Indeed, she had learned 
German well enough so that when confronted by the 
question on her War Registration card, What for- 
eign languages do you read well ? she had written, 
German. 

She had no difficulty, therefore, in recognizing from 
the too broad tops of the a’s, the too pointed c’s and the 
loops which twice crossed the t’s that the writer had 
been educated first to write German. He had failed no- 
where to carefully and accurately write the English form 
of the letters for which the German form was very dif- 
ferent, such as k and r and s ; it was only in the characters 
where the two scripts were similar that his care had been 
less. 


17 


18 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


You are (he had written) the daughter of Charles Farwell 
Gail, a dry-goods merchant of Decatur, Illinois. Your 
father and mother — ages 48 and 45 — are living; you have 
one older brother, Charles, now twenty-six years old who 
quarreled with his father four years ago and went away 
and has not been heard from. The family believe that he 
entered the war in some capacity years ago ; if so, he prob- 
ably was killed for he was of reckless disposition. You do 
not write to him, of course; but in your letters home you 
refer to being always on watch for word from Charles. You 
were twenty-four years old on November 17. You have 
no sisters but one younger brother, Frank, 12 on the tenth 
of May, who is a boy scout ; inform him of all boy-scout 
matters in your letters. Your other immediate family is a 
sister of your mother now living with your parents ; she is 
a widow, Mrs. Howard Grange, maiden name Cynthia Gif- 
ford. You were named for her ; she has a chronic ailment — 
diabetes. You write to her; you always inquire of her con- 
dition in letters to your parents. Your closest girl friend is 
Cora Tresdale, La Salle, Illinois, who was your roommate 
at Wellesley College, Wellesley, Mass. ; you were both class 
of 1915; you write to her occasionally. You recently have 
been much interested in 2nd Lieutenant George A. Byrne, 
from Decatur, now at Camp Grant ; he saw you in Chicago 
this past Saturday. Probably you are engaged to him; in 
any case, your status with him will be better defined by 
letter which will arrive for you at the Hotel Champlain, this 
city, Room 347. 

It is essential that you at once go to hotel and continue 
your identity there. Immediately answer by telegram any 
important inquiry for you; immediately answer all letters. 
Buy a typewriter of traveling design and do all correspond- 
ence on that, saying that you are taking it up for conven- 
ience. Your signature is on passport ; herewith also a por- 
tion of letter with your writing. So far as known, you do 
not sign nicknames, except to your father to whom you are 


THE WAND OF WAR 


19 


“Thia.” Mail arriving for you, or to arrive at hotel, to- 
gether with possessions in room will inform you of your 
affairs more fully. So far as now known you have no inti- 
mate friends in Chicago ; you are to start Thursday evening 
for Hoboken where you report Saturday morning to Mrs. 
Donald G. Gresham for work in the devastated districts in 
France, where you will observe all desired matters, particu- 
larly in regard to number, dispositions, personnel, equipment 
and morale of arriving American forces ; reporting. If and 
when it proves impractical to forward proper reports, you 
will make report in person, via Switzerland ; apply for pass- 
port to Lucerne. 

With this, the connected writing abruptly ended ; there 
was no signature and no notation except at the bottom of 
the sheet was an asterisk referring to an asterisk before 
the first mention of “mother.” This note supplied, 
“ Mother’s maiden name, Julia Trowbridge Gifford,” and 
also the street address in Decatur. Below that was the 
significant addenda: 

Cynthia Gail killed in Sunday night wreck ; identification 
now extremely improbable ; but watch papers for news. No 
suspicion yet at home or hotel ; but you must appear at once 
and answer any inquiry. 


This last command, which was a repetition, was em- 
phatically underlined. The page of the letter in Cynthia 
Gail’s handwriting was addressed to her mother and was 
largely a list of clothing — chemises, waists, stockings, 
and other articles — which she had bought in Chicago and 
charged to her father’s account at two department stores. 
A paragraph confided to her mother her feeling of in- 


20 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


significance at the little part she might play in the war, 
though it had seemed so big before she started away : 

Yet no one knows what lies before one ; even I may be 
given my great moment to grasp ! 

The letter was unfinished ; Cynthia Gail evidently had 
been carrying it with her to complete and mail later when 
she was killed. 

Ruth placed it under her pillow with the other paper 
and the passport and the money ; she unlocked her door 
and went out, locking it behind her; descending to the 
first floor, she obtained the yesterday’s paper and brought 
it back to her room. She found readily the account of a 
wreck on Sunday evening when a train had crashed 
through a street car. It had proved very difficult to 
identify certain of the victims; and one had not been 
identified at all ; she had been described only as a young 
girl, well dressed, fur toque, blue coat with dark fur 
collar. 

The magic of this money and the passport had faded 
quite away; the chain of vital, mortal occurrences which 
had brought them to Ruth Alden was becoming evident. 

There had been, first of all, an American girl named 
Cynthia Gail of Decatur, Illinois, young like Ruth but 
without responsibilities, loyal and ardent to play her part 
in the war. She had applied for overseas work ; the gov- 
ernment therefore had investigated her, approved her and 
issued her a passport and permitted her to make all ar- 
rangements for the journey to France and for work there. 
She had left her home in Decatur and had come alone, 
probably, to Chicago, arriving not later than Saturday. 


THE WAND OF WAR 


21 


She apparently had been alone in the city on Sunday even- 
ing after Lieutenant George Byrne had returned to Camp 
Grant ; also it was fairly certain that she had no intimate 
friends in Chicago as she had been stopping at a hotel. 
On Sunday evening she had been on the car which was 
struck by the train. 

This much was positive; the next circumstances had 
more of conjecture; but Ruth could reason them out. 

Someone among those who first went to the wreck 
found Cynthia Gail dead and found her passport upon 
her. This person might have been a German agent who 
was observing her ; much more probably he was simply a 
German sympathizer who was sufficiently intelligent to 
appreciate at once the value of his find. At any rate, 
someone removed the passport and letter and other pos- 
sessions which would identify Cynthia Gail; and that 
someone either acted promptly for himself and for Ger- 
many or brought his discoveries to others who acted very 
energetically. For they must immediately have got in 
touch with people in Decatur who supplied them with the 
information on the page of instructions; and they also 
must have made investigation of Cynthia Gail’s doings in 
Chicago. 

The Germans thereupon found that they possessed not 
merely a passport but a most valuable post and an identity 
to use for their own purposes. If they could at once sub- 
stitute one of their own people for Cynthia Gail — before 
inquiry for Cynthia Gail would be made or knowledge of 
her loss arise — this substitute would be able to proceed 
to France without serious suspicion; she would be able to 
move about with considerable freedom, probably, in the 


22 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


districts of France where Americans were holding the 
lines and could gather and forward information of all 
sorts of the greatest value to the Germans. They simply 
must find a German girl near enough like Cynthia Gail 
and clever and courageous enough to forge her signature, 
assume her place in her family, and in general play her 
role. 

It was plain that the Germans who obtained the pass- 
port knew of some German girl upon whom they could 
depend ; but they could not — or did not dare to attempt 
to — communicate directly with her. Ruth knew vaguely 
that hundreds of Germans, suspected of hostile activities, 
silently had disappeared. She knew that the American 
secret service constantly was causing the arrest of others 
and keeping many more under observation. It was cer- 
tain, therefore, that communication between enemy agents 
in Chicago must have been becoming difficult and danger- 
ous; moreover, Ruth had read that it was a principle of 
the German-spy organization to keep its agents ignorant 
of the activities of others in the same organization; so it 
seemed quite probable that the people who had possession 
of Cynthia Gail’s passport knew that there was a German 
girl in the city who might play Cynthia’s part but that 
they could not locate her. Yet they were obliged to find 
her, and to do it quickly, so that she could take up the 
role of Cynthia Gail before inquiries would be made. 

What better way of finding a girl in Chicago than post- 
ing yourself as a beggar on State Street between the great 
stores? It was indeed almost certain that if the girl they 
sought was anywhere in the city, sooner or later she 
would pass that spot. Obviously the two Germans who 


THE WAND OF WAR 


23 


had mixed with the crowd on State Street also had been 
searching for their German confederate; they had mis- 
taken Ruth for her; and one of them had somehow sig- 
naled the beggar to accost her. 

This had come to Ruth, therefore, not because she was 
chosen by fate ; it simply had happened to her, instead of 
to another of the hundreds of girls who had passed down 
State Street that morning, because she chanced to possess 
a certain sort of hair and eyes, shape of nose and chin, 
and way of carrying her head not unique at all but, in 
fact, very like two other girls — one who had been loyal 
and eager as she, but who now lay dead and another girl 
who had been sought by enemy agents for their work, but 
who had not been found and who, probably, would not 
now be found by them. 

For, after giving the boxes to Ruth, the German who 
played the beggar would not search further ; that delivery 
of the passport and the orders to her was proof that he 
believed she was the girl he sought. She had only to fol- 
low the orders given and she would be accepted by other 
German agents as one of themselves ! She would pretend 
to them that she was going as a German spy into France 
in order that she could go, an American spy, into Ger- 
many ! For that was what her orders read. 

“You will report in person via Switzerland!” they 
said. 

What a tremendous thing had been given her to do! 
What risks to run ; what plans to make ; what stratagems 
to scheme and to outwit! Upon her — her who an hour 
ago had been among the most futile and inconsiderable in 
all the world of war — now might hang the fate of the 


24 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


great moment if she did not fail, if she dared to do with- 
out regard to herself to the uttermost! She must do it 
alone, if she was to do it at all! She could not tell any- 
one! For the Germans who had entrusted this to her 
might be watching her. If she went to the American 
Secret Service, the Germans almost surely would know; 
and that would end any chance of their continuing to be- 
lieve her their agent. No; if she was to do it, she must 
do it of herself ; and she was going to do it! 

This money, which she recounted, freed her at once 
from all bonds here. She speculated, of course, about 
whose it had been. She was almost sure it had not been 
Cynthia Gail’s; for a young girl upon an honest errand 
would not have carried so great an amount in cash. No ; 
Ruth had heard of the lavishness with which the Germans 
spent money in America and of the extravagant enter- 
prises they hazarded in the hope of serving their cause in 
some way ; and she was certain that this had been German 
money and that its association with the passport had not 
begun until the passport fell into hostile hands. The 
money, consequently, was Ruth’s spoil from the enemy; 
she would send home two thousand dollars to free her 
from her obligation to her family for more than two years 
while she would keep the remainder for her personal ex- 
penses. 

The passport too was recovered from the enemy; yet it 
had belonged to that girl, very like Ruth, who lay dead 
and unrecognized since this had been taken from her. 
There came to Ruth, accordingly, one of those weak, 
peacetime shocks of horror at the idea of leaving that girl 
to be put away in a nameless grave. As if one more 


THE WAND OF WAR 


25 


nameless grave, amid the myriads of the war, made a 
difference ! 

Ruth gazed into the eyes of the girl of the picture; and 
that girl’s words, which had seemed only a commonplace 
of the letter, spoke articulate with living hope. “Even 
I may be given my great moment to grasp ! ” 

What could she care for a name on her grave ? 

“ You can’t be thinking of so small and silly a thing for 
me ! ” the girl of the picture seemed to say. “ When you 
and I may save perhaps a thousand, ten thousand, a mil- 
lion men ! I left home to serve ; you know my dreams, for 
you have dreamed them too; and, more than you, I had 
opportunity offered to do. And instead, almost before I 
had started, I was killed stupidly and, it seemed for noth- 
ing. It almost happened that — instead of serving — I 
was about to become the means of betrayal of our armies. 
But you came to save me from that; you came to do for 
me, and for yourself, more than either of us dreamed to 
do. Be sure of me, as I would be sure of you in my place ! 
Save me, with you, for our great moment! Carry me 
on!” 

Ruth put the picture down. “ We’ll go on together ! ” 
she made her compact with the soul of Cynthia Gail. 

She was glad that, before acting upon her decision, she 
had no time to dwell upon the consequences. She must 
accept her role at once or forever forsake it. Indeed, she 
might already be too late. She went to her washbowl and 
bathed ; she redid her hair, more like the girl in the pic- 
ture. The dress which she had been wearing was her 
best for the street so she put it on again. She put on her 
hat and coat ; she separated two hundred dollars from the 


26 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


rest of the money and put it in her purse; the balance, 
together with the passport and the page of Cynthia Gail’s 
letter, she secured in her knitting bag. The sheet of or- 
ders with the information about Cynthia Gail gave her 
hesitation. She reread it again carefully; and she was 
almost certain that she could remember everything; but, 
being informed of so little, she must be certain to have 
that exact. So she reached for her leaflet of instructions 
for knitting helmets, socks, and sweaters, and she wrote 
upon the margin, in almost imperceptible strokes, short- 
hand curls and dashes, condensing the related facts about 
Cynthia Gail. She put this in her bag, destroyed the 
original and, taking up her bag, she went out. 

Every few moments as she proceeded down the dun 
and drab street, in nowise changed from the half hour 
before, she pressed the bag against her side to feel the 
hardness of the packets pinned in the bottom; she needed 
this feelable proof to assure her that this last half hour 
had not been all her fantasy but that truly the wand of 
war, which she had seen to lift so many out of the drudge 
of mean, mercenary tasks, had touched her too. 

She hailed a taxicab as soon as she was out of sight of 
the boarding house and directed it to the best downtown 
store where she bought, with part of the two hundred 
dollars, such a fur toque and such a blue coat with a fur 
collar as she supposed Cynthia Gail might have possessed. 
She had qualms while she was paying for them; she 
seemed to be spending a beggar’s money, given her by 
mistake. She wore the new toque and the coat, instruct- 
ing that her old garments be sent, without name, to the 
war-relief shop. 


THE WAND OF WAR 


27 


Out upon the street again, the fact that she had spent 
the money brought her only exultation; it had begun to 
commit her by deed, as well as by determination and had 
begun to muster her in among those bound to abandon all 
advantage — her security, her life — in the great cause of 
her country. It had seemed to her, before, the highest 
and most wonderful cause for which a people had ever 
aroused; and now, as she could begin to think herself 
serving that cause, what might happen to her had become 
the tiniest and meanest consideration. 

She took another taxicab for the Hotel Champlain. 
She knew this for a handsome and fashionable hotel on 
the north side near the lake; she had never been in such 
a hotel as a guest. Now she must remember that she 
had had a room there since last week and she had been 
away from it since Sunday night, visiting, and she had 
kept the room rather than go to the trouble of giving it 
up. When she approached the hotel, she leaned forward 
in her seat and glanced at herself in the little glass fixed 
in one side of the cab. She saw that she was not trem- 
bling outwardly and that she had good color — too much 
rather than too little; and she looked well in the new, 
expensive coat and toque. 

When the cab stopped and the hotel doorman came out, 
she gave him money to pay the driver and she went at 
once into the hotel, passing many people who were sitting 
about or standing. 

The room-clerk at the desk looked up at her, as a room- 
clerk gazes at a good looking and well-dressed girl who is 
a guest. 

“ Key, please,” she said quietly. She had to risk her 


28 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


voice without knowing how Cynthia Gail had spoken. 
That was one thing which the Germans had forgotten to 
ascertain — or had been unable to discover — for her. 
But the clerk noticed nothing strange. 

“ Yes, Miss Gail,” he recognized her, and he turned to 
take the key out of box 347. “ Mail too, Miss Gail ? ” 

“ Please.” 

He handed Ruth three letters, two postmarked Decatur 
and one Rockford, and also the yellow envelope of a tele- 
gram. He turned back to the box and fumbled for a 
card. 

“There was a gentleman here for you ’bout half an 
hour ago, Miss Gail,” the clerk recollected. “ He waited 
a while but I guess he’s gone. He left this card for you.” 

Ruth was holding the letters and also the telegram un- 
opened; she had not cared to inquire into their contents 
when in view of others. It was far safer to wait until 
she could be alone before investigating matters which 
might further confuse her. So she was very glad that 
the man who had b^pn “ here for her ” was not present 
at that instant; certainly she required all the advantage 
which delay and the mail and the contents of Cynthia 
Gail’s room could give her. 

She had thought, of course, of the possibility of some- 
one awaiting her; and she had recognized three contin- 
gencies in that case. A man who called for her might 
be a friend or a relative of Cynthia Gail; this, though 
difficult enough, would be easiest and least dangerous of 
all. The man might be a United States agent aware that 
Cynthia Gail was dead, that her passport had fallen into 
hostile hands; he therefore would have come to take her 


THE WAND OF WAR 


29 


as an enemy spy with a stolen passport. The man might 
be a German agent sent there to aid her or give her 
further orders or information, if the Germans still were 
satisfied that they had put the passport into proper hands ; 
if they were not — that is, if they had learned that the 
beggar had made a mistake — then the man might be a 
German who had come to lure her away to recover the 
passport and punish her. 

The man's card, with his name — Mr. Hubert Lennon, 
engraved in the middle — told nothing more about him. 

“ I will be in my room," Ruth said to the clerk, when 
she glanced up from the card. “If Mr. Lennon returns 
or anyone else calls, telephone me." 

She moved toward the elevator as quickly as possible ; 
but the room-clerk’s eyes already were attracted toward 
a number of men entering from the street. 

“He’s not gone, Miss Gail! Here he is now!” the 
clerk called. 

Ruth pretended not to hear ; but no elevator happened 
to be waiting into which she could escape. 

“ Here’s the gentleman for you! " a bellboy announced 
to Ruth so that she had to turn and face then and there 
the gentleman who had been waiting for her. 


CHAPTER III 

THE NEW ROLE 


HE man who advanced from the group which had 



1 just entered the hotel, appeared to be about thirty 
years old; he was tall and sparely built and stooped very 
slightly as though in youth he had outgrown his strength 
and had never quite caught up. He had a prominent nose 
and a chin which, at first glance, seemed forceful; but 
that impression altered at once to a feeling that here was 
a man of whom something might have been made but 
had not. He was not at all dissolute or unpleasant look- 
ing; his mouth was sensitive, almost shy, with only lines 
of amiability about it; his eyes, which looked smaller than 
they really were because of the thick lenses of his glasses, 
were gray and good natured and observant. His hair 
was black and turning gray — prematurely beyond doubt. 
It was chiefly the grayness of his hair, indeed, which 
made Ruth suppose him as old as thirty. He wore a dark 
overcoat and gray suit — good clothes, so good that one 
noticed them last — the kind of clothes which Sam Hilton 
always thought he was buying and never procured. He 
pulled off a heavy glove to offer a big, boyish hand. 

“How do you do, Cy — Miss Gail?” he greeted her. 
He was quite sure of her but doubtful as to use of her 
given name. 

“ Hubert Lennon ! ” Ruth exclaimed, giving her hand 


THE NEW ROLE 


31 


to his grasp — a nice, pleased, and friendly grasp. She 
had ventured that, whoever he was, he had known Cynthia 
Gail long ago but had not seen her recently; not for sev- 
eral years, perhaps, when she was so young a girl that 
everyone called her Cynthia. Her venture went well. 

She was able to learn from him, without his suspecting 
that she had not known, that she had an engagement with 
him for the afternoon ; they were to go somewhere — she 
could not well inquire where — for some event of distinct 
importance for which she was supposed to be “ ready.” 

“Fm not ready, I’m sorry to say,” Ruth seized swiftly 
the chance for fleeing to refuge in “ her ” room. “ I’ve 
just come in, you know. But Til dress as quickly as I 

if 

can. 

“ I’ll be right here,” he agreed. 

She stepped into a waiting elevator and drew back into 
the corner; two men, who talked together, followed her 
in and the car started upwards. If the Germans had sent 
someone to the hotel to observe her when she appeared to 
take the place of Cynthia Gail, that person pretty clearly 
was not Hubert Lennon, Ruth thought; but she could not 
be sure of these two men. They were usual looking, mid- 
dle-aged men of the successful type who gazed at her more 
than casually; neither of them called a floor until after 
Ruth asked for the third; then the other said, “Fourth,” 
sharply while the man who remained silent left the ele- 
vator after Ruth. She was conscious that he came behind 
her while she followed the room numbers along the hall- 
way until she found the door of 347; he passed her while 
she was opening it. She entered and, putting the key on 
the inside, she locked herself in, pressing close to the panel 


32 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


to hear whether the man returned. But she heard only a 
rapping at a door farther on; the man’s voice saying, 
“ I, Adele;” then a woman’s and a child’s voices. 

“Nerves!” Ruth reproached herself. “You have to 
begin better than this.” 

She was in a large and well-furnished bedroom; the 
bed and bureau and dressing table were set in a sort of 
alcove, half partitioned off from the end of the room where 
was a lounge with a lamp and a writing desk. These were 
hotel furniture, of course; the other articles — the pretty, 
dainty toilet things upon the dressing table, the dresses 
and the suit upon the hangers in the closet, the nightdress 
and kimono upon the hooks, the boots on the rack, the 
waists, stockings, undergarments, and all the other girl’s 
things laid in the drawers — were now, of necessity, 
Ruth’s. There was a new steamer trunk upon a low 
stand beyond the bed; the trunk had been closed after 
being unpacked and the key had been left in it. A small, 
brown traveling bag — also new — stood on the floor be- 
side it. Upon the table, beside a couple of books and 
magazines, was a pile of department-store packages — 
evidently Cynthia Gail’s purchases which she had listed 
in her letter to her mother. The articles, having been 
bought on Saturday, had been delivered on Monday and 
therefore had merely been placed in the room. 

Ruth could give these no present concern; she could 
waste no time upon examination of the clothes in the 
closet or in the drawers. She bent at once before the mir- 
ror of the dressing table where Cynthia Gail had stuck in 
two kodak pictures and two cards at the edge of the glass. 
The pictures were both of the same young man — a tall, 


THE NEW ROLE 


33 


straight, and strongly built boy in officer’s uniform; prob- 
ably Lieutenant Byrne, Ruth thought ; at least he was not 
Hubert Lennon ; and the cards in the glass betrayed noth- 
ing about him, either; both, plainly, were “ reminder ” 
cards, one having “ Sunday, 4 130 ! ” written triumphantly 
across it, the other, “Mrs. Malcolm Corliss, Superior 
9979 *” 

Ruth knew — who in Chicago did not know ? — of Mrs. 
Malcolm Corliss, particularly since America entered the 
war. Ruth knew that the Superior number was a tele- 
phone probably in Mrs. Corliss’ big home on the Lake 
Shore Drive. Ruth picked up the leather portfolio lying 
upon the dressing table ; opening it, she faced four por- 
trait photographs ; an alert, able and kindly looking man 
of about fifty; a woman a few years younger, not very 
unlike Ruth’s own mother and with similarly sweet eyes 
and a similar abundance of beautiful hair. These photo- 
graphs had been but recently taken. The third was sev- 
eral years old and was of a handsome, vigorous, defiant 
looking boy of twenty-one or two; the fourth was of a 
cunning, bold little youth of twelve in boy-scout uniform. 
Ruth had no doubt that these were Cynthia Gail’s family; 
she was very glad to have that sight of them; yet they 
told her nothing of use in the immediate emergency. Her 
hand fell to the drawer of the dresser where, a moment 
ago, Ruth had seen a pile of letters; she recognized that 
she must examine everything; yet it was easier for her 
to open first the letters which had never become quite 
Cynthia Gail’s — the three letters and the dispatch which 
the clerk had given Ruth. 

She opened the telegram first and found it was from 


34 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


her father. She was thinking of herself, not as Ruth 
Alden, but as actually being Cynthia Gail now. It was a 
great advantage to be able to fancy and to dream ; she was 
Cynthia Gail ; she must be Cynthia henceforth or she could 
not continue what she was doing even here alone by her- 
self ; and surely she could not keep up before others un- 
less, in every relation, she thought of herself as that other 
girl. 

Letter received ; it's like you, but by all means go ahead ; 
I’ll back you. Love. Father. 

That told nothing except that she had, in some recent 
letter, suggested an evidently adventurous deviation from 
her first plan. 

The first letter from Decatur which Cynthia Gail now 
opened was from her mother — a sweet, concerned moth- 
erly letter of the sort which that girl, who had been Ruth 
Alden, well knew and which made her cry a little. It told 
absolutely nothing about anyone whom Cynthia might 
meet in Chicago except the one line, “ I’m very glad that 
Mrs. Malcolm Corliss has telephoned to you.” The sec- 
ond letter from Decatur, written a day earlier than the 
other, was from her father; from this Cynthia gained 
chiefly the information — which the Germans had not 
supplied her — that her father had accompanied her to 
Chicago, established her at the hotel and then been called 
back home by business. He had been “ sorry to leave her 
alone” but of course she was meeting small risks com- 
pared to those she was to run. The letter from Rockford, 
which had arrived only that morning, was from George 
— that meant George Byrne. She had been engaged to 



She looked away, half expecting the sound of the music, and the 
roses, and palms, and Gerry Hull would vanish 



























































































































































































THE NEW ROLE 


35 


him, it appeared; but they had quarreled on Sunday; he 
felt wholly to blame for it now; he was very, very sorry; 
he loved her and could not give her up. Would she not 
write him, please, as soon as she could bring herself to? 

The letter was all about themselves — just of her and 
of him. No one else at all was mentioned. The letters in 
the drawer — eight in number — were all from him; they 
mentioned, incidentally, many people but all apparently of 
Decatur; there was no reference of any sort to anyone 
named Hubert or Lennon. 

She returned the letters to their place in the drawer and 
laid with them those newly received. The mail, if it gave 
her small help, at least had failed to present any im- 
mediately difficult problem of its own. There was ap- 
parently no anxiety at home about her; she safely could 
delay responding until later in the afternoon; but she 
could not much longer delay rejoining Hubert Lennon or 
sending him some excuse; and offering excuse, when 
knowing nothing about the engagement to which she was 
committed, was perhaps more dangerous than boldly ap- 
pearing where she was expected. The Germans had told 
her that they believed she had no close friends in Chicago ; 
and, so far as she had added to that original information, 
it seemed confirmed. 

The telephone bell rang and gave her a jump; it was 
not the suddenness of the sound, but the sign that even 
there when she was alone a call might make demand 
which she could not satisfy. She calmed herself with an 
effort before lifting the receiver and replying. 

“ Cynthia ?” a woman’s voice asked. 

“Yes,” she said. 


36 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“It’s a large afternoon affair, dear,” the voice said 
easily, “ But quite wartime. I’d wear the yellow dress.” 

“Thank you, I will,” Cynthia said, and the woman 
hung up. 

That shocked Cynthia back to Ruth again ; she stood in 
the center of the room, turning about slowly and with 
muscles pulling with queer, jerky little tugs. The message 
had purported to be a friendly telephone call from some 
woman who knew her intimately; but Ruth quickly esti- 
mated that that was merely what the message was meant 
to appear. For if the woman really were so intimate a 
friend of Cynthia Gail, she would not have made so short 
and casual a conversation with a girl whom she could not 
have seen or communicated with since Sunday. No; it 
was plain that the Germans again were aiding her ; plain 
that they had learned — perhaps from Hubert Lennon 
waiting for her in the hotel lobby — about her afternoon 
engagement ; plain, too, that they were ordering her to go. 

A new and beautiful yellow dress, suitable for after- 
noon wear, was among the garments in the closet; there 
was an underskirt and stockings and everything else. 
Ruth was Cynthia again as she slipped quickly out of her 
street dress, took off shoes and stockings and redressed 
completely. She found a hat which evidently was to be 
worn with the yellow dress. So completely was she 
Cynthia now, as she bent for a final look in the glass, that 
she did not think that she looked better than Ruth Alden 
ever had ; she wondered, instead, whether she looked as 
well as she should. She found no coat which seemed dis- 
tinctly for the afternoon; so she put on the coat which 
she had bought. She carried her knitting bag with her 


THE NEW ROLE 


37 


as before — it was quite an advantage to have a receptacle 
as capacious as a knitting bag which she could keep with 
her no matter where she went. Descending to the ground 
floor, she found about the same number and about the 
same sort of people passing back and forth or lounging 
in the lobby. Hubert Lennon was there and he placed 
himself beside her as she surrendered her room key. 

“ You're perfectly corking, Cynthia!” he admired her, 
evidently having decided during his wait that he could 
say her name. 

Color — the delicate rose blush in her clear skin which 
Sam Hilton so greatly liked — deepened on her cheek. 

“All ready now, Hubert,” she said; her use of his name 
greatly pleased him and he grasped her arm, unneces- 
sarily, to guide her out. 

“Just a minute,” she hesitated as she approached the 
telegraph desk. “ I’ve a wire to send to father.” 

The plan had popped out with the impulse which had 
formed it; she had had no idea the moment before of 
telegraphing to Charles Gail. But now the ecstasy of the 
daring game — the game beginning here in small perils, 
perhaps, but also perhaps in great; the game which was 
swiftly to lead, if she could make it lead, across the sea 
and through France into Switzerland and then into the 
land of the enemy upon the Rhine — had caught her; and 
she knew instinctively how to reply to that as yet uncom- 
prehended telegram from her father. 

She reached for the dispatch blanks before she remem- 
bered that, though her handwriting would not be delivered 
in Decatur, still here she would be leaving a record in 
writing which was not like Cynthia Gail’s. So she merely 


38 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


took up the pen in her gloved fingers and gave it to Hubert 
Lennon who had not yet put his gloves on. 

“You write for me, please,” she requested. “Mr. 
Charles F. Gail,” she directed and gave the home street 
number in Decatur. “ Thanks for your wire telling me 
to go ahead. I knew you’d back me. Love. Thia.” 

“What?” Lennon said at the last word. 

“Just sign it ‘Thia.’” 

He did so; she charged the dispatch to her room and 
they went out. The color was still warm in her face. If 
one of the men in the lobby was a German stationed to 
observe how she did and if he had seen her start the mis- 
take of writing the telegram, he had seen also an instant 
recovery, she thought. 

A large, luxurious limousine, driven by a chauffeur in 
private livery, moved up as they came to the curb. When 
they settled side by side on the soft cushions, the driver 
started away to the north without requiring instructions. 

“ You were fifteen years old when I last had a ride 
with you,” Hubert obligingly informed her. 

That was nine years ago, in nineteen nine, Cynthia 
made the mental note; she had become twenty-four years 
old instead of twenty- two, since the morning. 

“ But I knew you right away,” he went on. “Aunt 
Emilie would have come for you but you see when she 
telephoned and found you weren’t in at half-past one, she 
knew she couldn’t call for you and get to Mrs. Corliss’ 
on time. And she’s a stickler for being on time.” 

So it was to Mrs. Corliss’ they were going — to her 
great home on the drive. The car was keeping on north- 
ward along the snow-banked boulevard with the white 


THE NEW ROLE 


39 


and arctic lake away to the right and, on the left, the great 
grounds of Mrs. Potter Palmer’s home. 

“ She’d have sent a maid for you,” Hubert explained, 
“ but I said it was stupid silly to send a maid after a girl 
who’s going into the war zone.” 

“ I’m glad you came instead for another ride with me,” 
Cynthia said. 

He reddened with pleasure. In whatever circles he 
moved, it was plain he received no great attention from 
girls. 

“I tried to get into army and navy both, Cynthia,” 
he blurted, apropos of nothing except that he seemed to 
feel that he owed explanation to her as to why he was 
not in uniform. “But they turned me down — eyes. 
Even the Canadians turned me down. But Aunt Emilie’s 
giving an ambulance ; and they’re going to let me drive it. 
They get under fire sometimes, I hear. On the French 
front.” 

“They’re often under fire,” Cynthia assured. “A lot 
of ambulance men have been killed and wounded; so 
that’s no slacker service.” 

“ Not if you can’t get in anything better,” he said, “ but 
mighty little beside what Gerry Hull’s been doing.” 

She startled a little. He had spoken Gerry Hull’s name 
with far less familiarity than Sam Hilton had uttered it 
that morning; but Hubert Lennon’s was with the fa- 
miliarity of one who knows personally the man men- 
tioned. 

“ You’ve seen him since he’s back ? ” Cynthia asked. It 
came to her suddenly that they — he and she — were go- 
ing to meet Gerry Hull ! 


40 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


The car was slowing before the turn in the driveway 
for Mrs. Corliss’ city home; a number of cars were ahead 
and others took line behind for the porte cochere where 
guests were entering the house. 

“Yes; I know him pretty well,” Hubert said with a 
sort of pitiful pride. He was sensitive to the fact that, 
when he had spoken of Gerry Hull, her interest in him 
had so quickened; but he was quite unresentful of it. 
“ I’ll see that he knows you, Cynthia,” he promised. 

She sat quiet, trying to think what to say to Hubert 
Lennon after this; but he did not want the talk brought 
back to himself. He spoke only of his friend until the man 
opened the door of the car; the house door was opened 
at the same moment; and Cynthia, gathering her coat 
about her and clutching close to her knitting bag, stepped 
out of the car and into the hall, warm and scented with 
hot-house flowers, murmurous with the voices and move- 
ment of many people in the big rooms beyond. A man 
servant directed her to a room where maids were in at- 
tendance and where she laid off her coat. She had never 
in her life been at any affair larger than a wedding or a 
reception to a congressman at Onarga; so it was a good 
deal all at once to find oneself a guest of Mrs. Corliss’, for 
it was plain that this reception was by no means a public 
affair but that the guests all had been carefully selected ; 
it was more to be present carrying a knitting bag ( for- 
tunately many others brought knitting bags) in which were 
twenty-three hundred dollars and a passport to France; 
and something more yet to meet Gerry Hull — or rather, 
have him meet you. For when she came out to the hall 
again, Hubert was waiting for her. 


THE NEW ROLE 


41 


“ I can’t find Aunt Emilie just now, Cynthia,” he said. 
“ But I’ve Gerry. There’s no sense in getting into that 
jam. We’ll go to the conservatory; and Gerry’ll come 
there. This way, Cynthia. Quick ! ” 


CHAPTER IV 

AT MRS. CORLISS’ 

S HE followed him about the fringes of the groups 
pressing into the great front room where a stringed 
orchestra was starting the first, glorious notes of the 
Marseillaise ; and suddenly a man’s voice, in all the power 
and beauty of the opera singer and with the passion of a 
Frenchman singing for his people, burst out with the 
battle song : 

A lions, enfants de la Patrie , 

Le jour de gloire est arrive! 

Contre nous de la tyrannie 
L’etendard sanglant est leve .... 

It lifted her as nothing had ever before. “ Go, children 
of your country; the day of glory is here! Against us 
the bloody standard of tyranny is raised! . . . .” 

She had sung that marvelous hymn of the French since 
she was a child ; before she had understood it at all, the 
leap and lilt of the verse had thrilled her. It had become 
to her next an historical song of freedom; when the war 
started — and America was not in — the song had ceased 
to resound from the past. The victory of the French 
upon the Marne, the pursuit to the Aisne; then the stand 
at Verdun gave it living, vibrant voice. Still it had been 
a voice calling to others — a voice which Ruth might hear 
42 


AT MRS. CORLISS’ 


43 


but to which she might not reply. But now, as it called 
to her: “Aux armes! . . Marchons! Marchons! 

. . ” she was to march with it ! 

The wonder of that made her a little dizzy and set her 
pulse fluttering in her throat. The song was finished and 
she was amid the long fronds of palms, the hanging vines, 
and the red of winter roses in the conservatory. She 
looked about and discovered Hubert Lennon guiding 
Gerry Hull to her. 

“Cynthia, this is Gerry Hull; Gerry, this is Cynthia 
Gail.” 

He was in his uniform which he had worn in the French 
service; he had applied to be transferred from his old 
escadrille to an American squadron, Ruth knew ; but the 
transfer was not yet effected. The ribbons of his decora- 
tions — the Croix de Guerre, the Medaille Militaire, the 
Cross of the Legion of Honor — ran in a little, brilliant 
row across the left breast of his jacket. It bothered 
him as her eyes went to them. He would not have 
sought the display — she thought — of wearing his dec- 
orations here at home; but since he was appearing in a 
formal — almost an official function — he had no choice 
about it. And she recognized instantly that he had not 
followed his friend out of the “jam” of the other rooms 
to meet her in order to hear more praise of himself from 
her. 

He was, indeed, far more interested in her than in him- 
self. “Why, Fve met you before, Miss Gail,” he said, 
and evidently was puzzling to place her. 

Ruth went warm with pleasure. “ I spoke to you on 
the street — when your car stopped on Michigan Avenue 


44 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


this morning,” she confessed. She had not been Cynthia 
Gail, then ; but he could not know that. 

“Of course! And I said some stuffy sort of thing to 
you, didn’t I ? ” 

“ I didn’t think it — stuffy,” Ruth denied, utilizing his 
word. There were seats where they were ; and suddenly 
it occurred to her, when he glanced at them, that he was 
remaining standing because she was, and that he would 
like to sit down, and delay there with her. She gasped a 
little at this realization; and she seated herself upon a 
gaily painted bench. He looked about before he sat down. 

“Hello; I say, where’s Hub?” 

Lennon had disappeared; and Ruth knew why. She 
had forgotten him in the excitement of meeting Gerry 
Hull; so he had felt himself in the way and had im- 
mediately withdrawn. But she could do nothing to mend 
that matter now ; she turned to Gerry Hull, who was on 
the bench beside her. 

He had more quickly banished any concern over his 
friend’s disappearance and was observing Ruth with so 
frank an interest that, instead of gazing away from her 
when she looked about at him, his eyes for an instant 
rested upon hers ; his were meditative, almost wistful eyes 
for that moment. They made her think, suddenly, of the 
little boy whose picture with his grandfather she used to 
see in her father’s newspaper — an alert, energetic little 
boy, yet with a look of wonder in his eyes why so much 
fuss was made about him. 

“ I seem to’ve been saying no end of stuffy things since 
I’ve been back, Miss Gail ; they appeared to be what I was 
expected to say. But I’m about at the finish of ’em. I’m 


AT MRS. CORLISS’ 


45 


to say something here this afternoon; and I’m going to 
say exactly what I think. Wouldn’t you?” 

“ Of course I would,” Ruth said. 

“ Then you forgive me ? ” 

“ For what?” 

“ Posing like such a self-righteous chump in a cab that 
you felt you ought to ask me what you should do ! ” 

“ You haven’t been posing,” Ruth denied for him again. 
“ Why, when I saw you, what amazed me was that — ” 
she stopped suddenly as she saw color come to his face. 

“ That I wasn’t striking an attitude ? Look here, I’m — 
or I was — one man in fifty thousand in the foreign legion ; 
and one in thousands who’ve been in the air a bit. I’d no 
idea what I was getting into when they told me to come 
home here or I’d — ” he stopped and shifted the subject 
from himself with abrupt finality. “You’re going to 
France, Hub tells me. You’ve been there in peace- 
time, of course — Paris surely.” 

Ruth nodded. She had not thought that, as Cynthia, 
she must have been abroad until he was so certain of it. 

“ Did you ever go about old Paris and just poke around, 
Miss Gail?” 

“In those quaint, crooked little streets which change 
their names every time they twist? ” 

“The Rue des Saints Peres, the Rue Pavee — that 
name rather takes one back, doesn’t it ? Some time ago it 
must have been when in Paris a citizen could describe 
where he lived by saying it was on 4 the paved street/ ” 
“Yet it was only in the fifteenth century that wolves 
used to come in winter into Paris.” 

“To scare Frangois Villon into his Lodgings for a 


46 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


Night? ” Gerry said. “ So you know that story of Steven- 
son’s, too ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ I suppose, though, you had to stay at the Continental, 
or the Regina, or some hotel like that, didn’t you? I did 
at first, when my tutor used to take me. You’d have been 
with your parents, of course ” 

“Of course,” Ruth said. 

“ But have you planned where you’ll stay now ? You’ll 
choose your own billets, I believe.” 

Ruth appealed to her memories of Du Maurier and 
Victor Hugo; she had read, long ago, Trilby and Les 
Miser able s, of course, and Notre-Dame de Paris; and she 
knew a good bit about old Paris. 

“ The Latin Quarter’s cheapest, I suppose.” 

“And any amount the most sport ! ” 

She got along very well ; or he was not at all critical. 
He was relaxing with her from the strain of being upon 
exhibition ; and he seemed to be having a very good time. 
The joy of this made her bold to plan with him all sorts 
of explorations of Paris when they would meet over there 
with a day off. She looked away and closed her eyes for 
a second, half expecting that when she opened them the 
sound of music, and the roses, and palms, and conserva- 
tory, and Gerry Hull must have vanished; but he was 
there when she glanced back. And she noticed agreeable 
and pleasing things about him — the way his dark hair 
brushed back above his temples, the character in his strong, 
well-formed hands. 

Lady Agnes came out looking for him ; and he called her 
over: 


AT MRS. CORLISS* 


47 


“ Oh, Agnes, here we are ! ” 

So Ruth met Lady Agnes, too; but Lady Agnes took 
him away, laughingly scolding him for having left her so 
long alone among all those American people. Ruth did 
not follow ; and while she lingered beside the bench where 
he had sat with her, she warned herself that Gerry Hull 
had paid her attention as a man of his breeding would have 
paid any girl whom he had been brought out to meet. 
Then the blood, warm within her, insisted that he had 
not disliked her; he had even liked her for herself. 

The approach of an elderly woman in a gray dress re- 
turned Ruth to the realities and the risks of the fraud she 
had been playing to win Gerry Hull’s liking. For the 
woman gazed at her questioningly and swiftly came up. 

Ruth arose. Was this Hubert Lennon’s “Aunt Emi- 
lie?” she wondered. Had she recently seen the real 
Cynthia so that she was aware that Ruth was not she? 

No; the woman was calling her Cynthia; and with the 
careful enunciation of the syllables, Ruth recognized the 
voice as that which had addressed her over the telephone 
when she was in her room at the hotel. 

“Cynthia, you are doing well — excellently!” This 
could refer only to the fact that she had met Gerry Hull 
already and had not displeased him. “ Develop this 
opportunity to the utmost; you may find him of greatest 
possible use when you are in France! ” 


CHAPTER V 

“you’re not like anyone else” 

HE woman immediately moved away and left the 



JL conservatory. No one could have observed her 
speaking to Ruth except, perhaps, Hubert Lennon, who 
now had reappeared and, finding Ruth alone, offered his 
escort shyly. If he had noticed and if he wondered what 
acquaintance Cynthia had happened upon here, he did not 
inquire. 

“ We’d better go into the other rooms,” he suggested. 
“ They’re starting speeches.” 

She accompanied him, abstractedly. Whatever question 
she had held as to whether the Germans held her under 
surveillance had been answered; but it was evident that 
so far, at least, her appearance in the part of Cynthia Gail 
had satisfied them — indeed, more than satisfied. What 
beset Ruth at this moment was the fact that she now 
knew the identity of an unsuspected enemy among the 
guests in this house ; but she could not accuse that woman 
without at the same time involving herself. It presented 
a nice problem in values; Ruth must be quite confident 
that she possessed the will and the ability to aid her side 
to greater extent than this woman could harm it ; or she 
must expose the enemy even at the cost of betraying 
herself. 

She looked for the woman while Hubert led her through 


48 


YOU’RE NOT LIKE ANYONE ELSE 


49 


the first large room in the front of the big house, where 
scores of guests who had been standing or moving about 
were beginning to find places in the rows of chairs which 
servants were setting up. Hubert took Ruth to a small, 
nervously intent lady with glistening black hair and brows, 
who was seated and half turned about emphatically con- 
versing with the people behind her. 

“Aunt Emilie, here’s Cynthia,” Hubert said loudly to 
win her attention; she looked up, scrutinized Ruth and 
smiled. 

“I had to help Mrs. Corliss receive, dear; or Fd have 
called for you myself. So glad Hubert has you here.” 

Ruth took the hand which she outstretched and was 
drawn down beside her. Aunt Emilie (Ruth knew no 
name for her in relation to herself and therefore used 
none in her reply) continued to hold Ruth’s hand affection- 
ately for several moments and patted it with approval 
when at last she let it go. Years ago she had been a close 
friend of Cynthia Gail’s mother, it developed; Julia Gail 
had written her that Cynthia was in Chicago on her way 
to France; Aunt Emilie had asked Mrs. Corliss to tele- 
phone to Cynthia on Saturday inviting her here; Aunt 
Emilie herself had telephoned on Sunday and Monday to 
the hotel to find Cynthia, but vainly each time. 

“ Where in the world were you all that time, my dear 
child?” 

A man’s voice suddenly rose above the murmur in the 
room. The man was standing upon a little platform 
toward which the chairs were faced and with him were an 
officer in the uniform of the French Alpine chasseurs, 
Lady Agnes Ertyle, and Gerry Hull. For an instant the 


50 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


start of the speaking was to Ruth only a happy interrup- 
tion postponing the problem of explanations to “Aunt 
Emilie”; but the next minute Ruth had forgotten all 
about that small matter. Gerry Hull, from his place on 
the platform, was looking for her. 

The French officer, having been introduced, had com- 
menced to address his audience in emphatic, exalted Eng- 
lish ; the others upon the platform had sat down. Gerry 
Hull’s glance, which had been going about the room study- 
ing the people present, had steadied to the look of a search 
for some special one; his eyes found Ruth and rested. 
She was that special one. He looked away soon ; but his 
eyes had ceased to search and again, when Ruth glanced 
directly at him, she found him observing her. 

She leaned forward a little and tried not to look toward 
him or to think about him too much ; but that was hard to 
do. She had recognized that, when Hubert Lennon had 
summoned Gerry Hull out to the conservatory, something 
had been troubling him and he had been on the brink of 
a decision. He had met her during the moments when 
he must decide and, in a way, he had referred the decision 
to her. “ They’re going to make me say something here 
this afternoon; and this time I’m going to say exactly 
what I think. Wouldn’t you?” 

She had told him that she would, without knowing at 
all what it was about. Now it seemed to her that, as his 
time for speaking approached, he was finding his de- 
termination more difficult. 

The French officer was making an extravagant address, 
praising everyone here and all Americans for coming into 
the war to save France and civilization; he was com- 


YOU’RE NOT LIKE ANYONE ELSE 


51 


plimenting every American deed, proclaiming gratitude in 
the name of his country for the aid which America had 
given ; and, while he was speaking thus excessively, Ruth 
was aware that Gerry Hull was watching her most in- 
tently; and when she glanced up at him she saw him 
draw up straighter in his chair and sit there, looking 
away, with lips tight shut. The French officer finished 
and, after the applause, Lady Agnes Ertyle was introduced 
and she spoke earnestly and simply, telling a little of the 
work of Americans in Belgium and in France, of the great 
value of American contributions and moral support; she 
added her praise and thanks for American aid. 

It seemed to Ruth that once Gerry Hull was about to 
interrupt. But he did not ; no one else appeared to notice 
his agitation ; everyone was applauding the pretty English 
girl who had spoken so gracefully and was sitting down. 
The gentleman who was making the introductions was 
beginning to relate who Gerry Hull was and what he had 
done, when Gerry suddenly stood up. Everyone saw him 
and clapped wildly ; the introducer halted and turned ; he 
smiled and sat down, leaving him standing alone before 
his friends. 

Men here and there were rising while they applauded 
and called his name; other men, women, and girls got to 
their feet. Hubert Lennon, on Ruth’s left, was one of 
the first to stand up; his aunt was standing. So Ruth 
arose then, too; everyone throughout the great rooms 
was standing now in honor of Gerry Hull. He gazed 
about and went white a little; he was looking again for 
someone lost in all the standing throng; he was looking 
for Ruth ! He saw her and studied her queerly again for 


52 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


a moment. She sat down ; others began settling back and 
the rooms became still. 

“ I beg your pardon,” Ruth heard Gerry Hull’s voice 
apologizing first to the man who had tried to introduce 
him. “ I beg the pardon of you all for what I’m going 
to say. It’s not a word of what I’m supposed to say, I 
know; it’ll be just what I think and feel. 

“ We’re not doing our part, people ! ” he burst out pas- 
sionately without more preparation. “ We’re still taking 
protection behind England and France, as we’ve done 
since the start of the war! We ought to be there in force 
now ! God knows, we ought to have been there in force 
three years ago! But instead of being on the battle 
line with them in force even with theirs, our position is so 
pitiable that we make our allies feel grateful for a few 
score of destroyers and a couple of army divisions hold- 
ing down quiet sectors in Lorraine. That’s because our 
allies have become so used to expecting nothing — or next 
to nothing — of America that anything at all which we do 
fills them with such sincere amazement that they com- 
pliment and overwhelm us with thanks of the sort you 
have heard.” 

He turned about to the French officer and to Lady 
Agnes, who had just spoken. “ Forgive me ! ” he cried to 
them so that all in the rooms could hear. “ You know I - 
mean no offense to you or lack of appreciation of what 
you have said. You cannot tell the truth to my people; 
I can for you, and I must ! ” 

He straightened and spoke to his own people again. 
“ On the day that German uhlans rode across the Belgian 
border, Belgium and England and France — yes, even 


YOU’RE NOT LIKE ANYONE ELSE 


53 


Russia — looked to us to come in; or, at least, to protest 
and, if our protest was not respected, to enforce it by our 
arms. But we did nothing — nothing but send a few dol- 
lars for Belgian relief, a few ships of grain and a few 
civilians to distribute it. The outrages of the Boche beasts 
went on — Termonde, Louvain, the massacres of the 
Armenians, the systematic starvation and enslavement of 
Belgians, Poles, Serbians ; and we subscribed a little more 
money for relief. Here and there American missionaries 
saved a life or two. That’s all we did, my friends! So 
here in our country and in our own newspapers the Ger- 
man Imperial Embassy paid for and had printed advertise- 
ments boasting that they were going to sink without 
warning ships sailing from our ports with our own people 
aboard; and they sank the Lusitania! 

“Then England and France and the remnant of 
Belgium said, 4 Surely now America must come in ! ’ But 
you know what we did ! ” 

He stopped, breathless, and Ruth was leaning forward, 
breathless too. The passion which had seized and was 
swaying him was rousing like passions in the others before 
him ; his revolt had become their revolt ; and they warmed 
and kindled with him. But she did not. Though this out- 
burst of his soul brought to her feeling for him, himself, 
beyond what she could have believed, the meaning of what 
he said did not so inflame her. Her feeling was amazingly 
personal to him. 

“We protested,” he was going on. “Protested; and 
did nothing ! They sank our ships and murdered our own 
people under the American flag; and we continued to 
protest! And England and France and the nations hold- 


54 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


ing back the Boche with them ceased to honor us with 
expectations of action; so, expecting nothing, naturally 
they became more grateful and amazed at anything which 
we happened to do. When the Kaiser told us he might 
allow us — if we were very good — one ship a week to 
Europe, provided we sent him notice in advance and we 
painted it in stripes, just as he said, and when that at last 
was too much for us to take, they honored us in Europe 
with wondering what we would do ; and they thanked and 
complimented us, their new ally, for sending them more 
doctors and medical supplies without charging them for 
it, and after a while a few divisions of soldiers. 

“God knows I would say no word against our men 
who have gone to France; I speak for them! For I have 
been an American in France and have learned some of the 
shame of it! The shame, ” he repeated passionately, “of 
being an American ! I have gone about an ordinary duty, 
performing it much after the fashion of my comrades in 
the French service — or in the British — and when I have 
returned, I have found that what I happened to do is the 
thing picked out for special mention and praise to the 
public, when others who have done the same or more than 
myself have not had that honor. Because I was an Ameri- 
can! They feel they must yet compliment and thank 
Americans for doing what they have been doing as a 
matter of course all this time that we have stayed out; 
so they thank and praise us for beginning to do now what 
we ought to have done in 1914. 

“We have been sitting here — you and I — letting our 
allies thank us for at last beginning to fight a little of our 
war! Think of that when they have been giving them- 


“ YOU’RE NOT LIKE ANYONE ELSE ” 


55 


selves and their all — all — in our cause for three and a 
half years ! ” 

He stepped back suddenly and stood with bowed head 
as though — Ruth thought — he had meant to say more, 
but suddenly had found that he could not. She was 
trembling as she sat staring at him ; she was alone in her 
chair now; for the people all about, overswept by their 
feelings, were standing up again, and clapping wildly, 
and calling out : “France! France! . . England! 

France! . . Belgium? . . England!” they were 

crying in adulation. 

She saw him again for an instant ; he had stepped back 
a little farther, and raised his head, and was gazing at the 
people acclaiming him and the allies for whom he had 
spoken. He stared about and seemed to seek her — at 
least, he gazed about when this great acclaim suddenly 
bewildered him, as he had gazed before he had spoken 
and when his eyes had found her. She stood up then; 
but he turned about to Lady Agnes, who had risen and 
was beside him; the people in front of Ruth screened him 
from sight and when she got view of the platform again 
he was gone. 

The guests were leaving their chairs and moving 
toward the rooms where refreshments were being served; 
but it was many minutes before Ruth heard anyone men- 
tion other matters than the war and Gerry Hull’s speech. 
That had been a thoroughly remarkable and sincere state- 
ment of the American position, Ruth heard the people 
about her saying; to have heard it was a real experience. 

It had come as the climax of what for Ruth was far 
more than that; the darkening of the early winter night 


56 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


outside the drawn curtains of the windows, the tinkling 
of a little clock for the half hour — half-past four — 
brought to her the amazing transformation worked upon 
Ruth Alden since, scarcely six hours before, the wonder- 
ful wand of war had touched her. With the dawn of this 
same day which was slipping so fast into the irrevocable 
past, she had awakened to dream as of a wish unrealizable 
that she might welcome Gerry Hull home ; now she knew 
him ; she had talked with him alone ; when she had been 
among all his friends in the other room, he had sought her 
with his eyes. He had disappeared from the rooms now ; 
and no one seemed to know where he had gone, though 
many inquired. But Ruth knew; so she slipped away 
from Hubert Lennon and from his Aunt Emilie, who had 
forgotten all about asking where Cynthia had been the 
last two days; and Ruth returned to the conservatory. 

Upon that bench where they had sat together, hidden 
by the palms, and hanging vines, and the roses, she saw 
him sitting alone, bent forward with his elbows on his 
knees and his face in his hands, staring down at the floor. 

He looked up quickly as he heard her step ; she halted, 
frightened for a moment by her own boldness. If he 
had chosen that spot for his flight from the others, it 
would mean — she had felt — that he was willing that 
she should return there. But how did she know that? 
Might it not be wholly in her fancy that, since they had 
separated, he had thought about her at all ? 

“Hello, Miss Gail ! he hailed her quickly, but so 
quietly that it was certain he wished no one else to know 
that he was there. “ I was wondering how I could get you 
here.” 


“YOU’RE NOT LIKE ANYONE ELSE 


57 


Her heart began beating once more. “ I wondered if 
you’d be here,” she said; he could make of that a good 
deal what he liked. 

He stood up. “ Let’s stay here, please,” he asked her, 
whispering; and he bent a little while he waited for her 
to be seated, hiding from sight of anyone who might 
glance over the tops of the palms. He was beside her on 
the bench now. 

“ I want you to tell me what I did in there just now. 
Miss Gail,” he asked. “Agnes Ertyle can’t, of course; 
others, whom I know pretty well, won’t. But you will, I 
think.” 

The complete friendliness of this confidence made Ruth 
wonder what he might have known about Cynthia Gail, 
which let him thus so instinctively disclose himself to her; 
but it was not to Cynthia Gail; it was to her, herself, 
Ruth! 

“ I’ve only known you for an hour, Miss Gail ; but I’d 
rather have your honest opinion than that of any other 
American.” 

From the way he said that, she could not tell whether 
he had chosen his word purposely to except Lady Agnes 
Ertyle from any comparison with her; and she wanted 
to know ! 

“I think you meant to say a very, very fine thing,” 
Ruth told him simply. 

“ Btat I actually said — ” 

“You’ve been a long time away from home — from 
America, our country,” Ruth interrupted him before he 
could get her into greater difficulties. “You’ve only 
known me an hour; but, of course, I’ve known you — or 


58 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


about you — for a good many years. Everyone has. 
You’ve been away ever since the start of the war, of 
course; and even before that you were away, mostly in 
England, for the greater part of your time, weren’t you? ” 

“ I was at school at Harrow for a while,” he confessed. 
“And I was at Cambridge in 19 13- 19 14.” 

“ That’s what I thought. So while you’ve called your- 
self an American and you’ve meant to stay an American 

— I know you meant that — you couldn’t quite really be- 
come one, could you ? ” 

He drew back from her a trifle and his eyes rested upon 
hers a little confused, while color crept into his brown 
face and across his forehead. 

“ Please tell me just what you want to,” he begged. 

“ I don’t want to tell you a thing unpleasant ! ” she cried 
quietly. “And I can’t, unless you’ll believe that I never 
admired anyone so much as you when you were speaking 

— I mean anyone,” she qualified quickly, “ who was say- 
ing things which I believed all wrong ! ” 

Terror for her boldness caught her again; but it was 
because he had seen that with him she must be bold — or 
honest — that he had wanted her there; for he did want 
her there and more than before. While he had been 
speaking, she had been thinking about him — thinking as 
well as feeling for him ; and she had been thinking about 
him ever since — thinking thoughts her own, or at least 
distinct from his and from those of his friends in the other 
rooms who had so acclaimed him and from whom he had 
fled. He realized it; and that was why he wanted her. 

“I believe that to be a true American is the highest 
honor in the world today,” she said with the simplicity of 


YOU’RE NOT LIKE ANYONE ELSE 


59 


deep feeling. “ I believe that, so far from having any- 
thing to be ashamed about, an American — particularly 
such an American as you might be ” 

“ Might be ! ” he repeated. 

“Has more to be rightly proud of than anyone else! 
And not alone because America is in the war now, but 
because — at the cost of staying out so long — our coun- 
try came in when and how she did ! You understand I say 
nothing against our allies — nothing like what you have 
said against our own country! Belgium got the first 
attack of the Germans and fought back, oh, so nobly, and 
so bravely, and hopelessly; but Belgium was invaded! 
France fought, as everyone knows, in self-defense and for 
a principle; England fought in self-defense, too, as well 
as for a principle — for were not the German guns almost 
at her shores? But we have gone in for a principle — 
and in self-defense, too, perhaps; but for the principle 
first ! Oh, there is a difference in that ! A hundred mil- 
lion people safe and unthreatened — for whether or not 
we really were safe and unthreatened, we believed we were 
— going into a war without idea of any possible gain or 
advantage solely for a principle! Oh, I don’t mean to 
make a speech to you.” 

“ Go on ! ” he ordered. “ I’ve just made one ; you go on 
now.” 

“ You spoke about the Kaiser’s order to us about how 
to paint our ships, as if the insult of that was what at 
last brought us in ! How little that had to do with it for 
us ! It merely happened to come at the time we could at 
last go in — when a hundred million people, not in danger 
which they could see or feel, decided to go in, knowing 


60 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


even better than those who had decided earlier what it 
was going to mean. For the war was different then from 
what it was at first; the Russia of the Czar and of the 
empire was gone; and in France and in England there 
was a difference, too. Oh, I don’t know how to say it; 
just France, at first, was fighting as France and for France 
against Germany; and England, for England, was doing 
the same. And America couldn’t do that — I mean fight 
for America; she couldn’t join with allies who were 
fighting for themselves or even for one another. The 
side of the allies had to become more than that before 
we could go in ; and it is and we’re in ! Oh, I don’t know 
how or when it will appear; but I know — know that 
before long you will be prouder to be an American than 
you ever dreamed you could be if we had gone in like the 
others when you thought we should.” 

She had been gazing at him and, for a few moments, 
he had been staring in bewilderment at her; but now he 
was turned away and she could see from the set of his 
lips, from the pulse throbbing below his temple as the 
muscles of his face pulled taut, how she had offended him. 

“ Thank you,” he said to her shortly. 

“I’ve hurt you!” 

“ Didn’t you mean to ? ” 

“ Not this way.” 

“You told what you thought; I asked to know it. 
How do you happen to be here, Miss Gail?” he asked 
with sudden directness after a pause. 

Ruth recollected swiftly Cynthia Gail’s connections 
through Hubert Lennon’s aunt with Mrs. Corliss and she 
related them to Gerry Hull, perforce ; and this unavoidable 


“YOU’RE NOT LIKE ANYONE ELSE 


61 


deception distressed her more than all the previous ones 
she had played. She realized that, in order to understand 
what she had said, he was trying to understand her; and 
she wished that she could tell him that she was Ruth 
Alden, working, only as late as that morning, in Hilton 
Brothers' office. 

“You're not like anyone else here," he said, without 
pressing his inquiry further. “ Hub Lennon told me that 
he had a different sort of girl with him. These other 
people are all like myself; you saw the way they took 
what I said. They didn't take it as said against them; 
they've been in the war, heart and soul, since the first. 
You’ve only come in when we — I mean America," he 
corrected with a wince, “came in. I think I felt that 
without knowing it ; that’s why I talked to you more than 
to all the rest together. That’s why I needed to see you 
again; you're more of an American, I guess, than anyone 
else here." 

He said that with a touch of bitterness which prevented 
her offering reply. 

“ You haven’t hurt me as me," he denied. “ If you just 
told me that my country believed I was wrong and had 
been fighting for something lower than it was willing to 
fight for until April, 1917, why that would be all right. 
But what you have said is against the finest, noblest, most 
chivalrous men the world ever knew — a good many of 
them dead, now, fallen on the field of honor, Americans 
— Americans of the highest heart, Norman Prince, Kif- 
fen Rockwell, Vic Chapman, and the rest! If being 
American means to wait, after you see beasts like the 
Germans murdering women and children, until you’ve sat- 


62 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


isfied your smug soul that everyone who’s fighting the 
beast is just your sort, they weren’t Americans and I’m 
not an American either, thank God ! ” 

He arose from beside her in his overwhelming emotion ; 
and she, without knowing what she did, put out a hand, 
and caught his sleeve, and pulled him down beside her 
again. 

“Wait!” she almost commanded him. “I can’t have 
you misunderstand me so! This morning when I woke 
up — it was before I knew I was to meet you — I tried 
to imagine knowing you ! ” 

“To tell me what you have ? ” 

“To thank you for what you have done ! ” 

“ You’re a strange person ! ” 

“ Oh, I can’t explain everything even to myself ! ” Ruth 
cried. “ I only know that you — and the men you’ve men- 
tioned — had the wonderful right to do, of yourselves, fine 
and brave things before our country had the right ! ” 

That was sheer stupidity to him, she saw; and she 
could not make it clearer. He wanted to leave her now ; 
but he did not forget himself as he had the moment earlier. 
He waited for her to rise and he accompanied her to the 
other rooms. They separated without formal leave- 
taking as others claimed him, and Hubert Lennon found 
her. Hubert and his aunt took her back to the hotel, 
where Aunt Emilie — Ruth yet had no name for her — 
offered an invitation for luncheon tomorrow or the day 
after. Ruth accepted for the second day and went up 
to her room, where she locked herself in, took off the 
yellow dress, and flung herself face downward across the 
bed. 


“ YOU’RE NOT LIKE ANYONE ELSE ” 63 


Except for the chocolate and little cakes served at Mrs. 
Corliss’, she had eaten nothing since breakfast; but she 
scarcely thought to be hungry or considered her weariness 
now. What a day had been given to her; and how fright- 
fully she had bungled it ! She had met Gerry Hull, and 
he had found interest in her, and she had taken advantage 
of his interest only to offend, and insult him, and turn him 
away! The Germans, upon whose support she must 
depend in all her plans, had given her a first definite order ; 
and she had completely disregarded it in her absorption 
in offending Gerry Hull. At any moment, therefore, they 
might take action against her — either direct action of 
their own, or give information which would expose her 
to the American authorities, and bring about her arrest 
and disgrace. A miserable end, now, not only to her great 
resolves of that morning, but to any possible rehabilitation 
with Gerry Hull! For if that morning she had dreamed 
of meeting him, now this night a thousand times intensi- 
fied she thought of him again and again — constantly, it 
seemed. And yet she would not have taken back a word 
of that which had angered him and turned him away. 

She got up at last and went down alone to dinner ; and, 
when nothing more happened, she returned to her own 
room, where after more carefully going over all Cynthia 
Gail’s things, she took plain paper and an envelope and 
wrote a short note to Sam Hilton, informing him that 
most important personal matters suddenly had forced her 
to give up her position with him; she wrote the landlady 
at her boarding house that she had been called home and 
would either return or send for her trunk later. She 
mailed these herself and went to bed. 


64 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


The next morning she bought a small typewriter, of the 
sort which one can carry traveling, and took up Cynthia 
Gail’s correspondence. Neither the mail of that day nor 
the telephone presented to her any difficult problem ; and 
she had no new callers. Indeed, except for Hubert Len- 
non, who “looked by” — as he spoke of it — just before 
noon, she encountered no one who had anything to say to 
her until, walking out early in the afternoon, she met upon 
the street the woman in gray who had given her the order 
about Gerry Hull on yesterday afternoon. 

Ruth went a little weak with fright when the woman 
caught step beside her; but the woman at once surprised 
her with reassurance. 

“ Gerry Hull returns to France from here,” the woman 
informed abruptly. “ He will be transferred to the Ameri- 
can air service there; he will sail from New York proba- 
bly on the Ribot next week. That is a passenger vessel, 
carrying cargo, of course; but not yet used for troop 
shipments. Passengers proceed as individuals. You will 
probably be allowed a certain amount of choice in selecting 
your ship. So you shall report at New York and endeavor 
to secure passage upon the Ribot. Understand ? ” 

“ Perfectly,” Ruth said. 

“Your friendship with Gerry Hull will prove invalu- 
able in France! Do nothing to jeopardize it! You 
have done with him, well ! But you are in too much danger 
here; go East tonight; wait there.” 

The woman went away. How much did she know 
about what had passed with Gerry Hull, Ruth wondered. 
She had seen, probably, that Ruth was with him again 
in the conservatory after his speech and that they had 


YOU’RE NOT LIKE ANYONE ELSE 


65 


stayed there a long time together. She had done with him, 
well ! She smiled woefully to herself ; at least it seemed 
to have aided her that the Germans thought so. 

It would have puzzled her more, certainly, if she had 
known that after the time when Gerry Hull and she forgot 
to whisper and forgot, indeed, everyone but themselves, 
the woman had heard almost every word which was said ; 
and that the woman’s opinion of the girl who was playing 
the part of Cynthia Gail was that she was a very clever one 
to know enough and dare enough to take single and vio- 
lent opposition to Gerry Hull. For the Germans, in 
preparation for this war, had made a most elaborate and 
detailed study of psychology of individuals and of na- 
tions. That study of nations has not shown conspicuously 
successful results; but their determination of factors 
which are supposed to influence individuals is said to have 
fared far better. 

Their instructions to a woman — or a girl — who is 
commanded to make an impression upon a man inform that 
a girl in dealing with a weak character progresses most cer- 
tainly and fastest by agreeing and complying; but when 
one has to do with a man of strong character, opposition 
and challenge to him bring the surest result. 

Of course that is not an exclusively German discovery; 
and to act in accordance with it, one is not obliged to be 
truly a German spy and to know it from the tutorings of 
a German psychologist. Indeed, one does not have to 
know it at all ; one need merely be a young girl, thoughtful 
and honest, as well as impulsive and of quick but deep pas- 
sions, who admires and cares so very much for a young 
man who has talked serious things with her, that she can- 


66 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


not just say yes to his yes and no to his no, but must try 
at once to work out the difference between them. 

Not to know it is hard on that girl, particularly when 
she is setting out upon an adventure which at once cuts her 
off from everyone whom she has known. 

Ruth had no companion at all. She had to write to her 
own mother in Onarga, of course; and, after buying with 
cash an order for two thousand dollars, she sent it to her 
mother with a letter saying that she was assigned to a 
most wonderful work which was taking her abroad. She 
was not yet free to discuss the details; but her mother 
must trust her and know that she was doing a right and 
wise thing ; and her mother must say nothing about it to 
anyone at all. It might keep her away for two years or 
more; so the people who were paying her expenses had 
forwarded her this money for home. Ruth wished her 
mother to send for her clothes and her trunk from the 
boarding house; Ruth would not need them. And if any 
inquiry came for Ruth from Hilton Brothers or elsewhere, 
Ruth had gone East to take a position. There was no use 
writing her at the old addresses; she would send an 
address later. 

She knew her mother ; and she knew that her mother 
was sure enough of her so that she would do as asked and 
not worry too much. 

So upon that same afternoon, Ruth packed up Cynthia 
Gail's things ; and she wrote to Cynthia Gail’s parents and 
to Second Lieutenant George Byrne at Camp Grant, sign- 
ing the name below the writing as Cynthia Gail had signed 
it upon her passport. 

That passport was ceasing to be a mere possession and 


YOU’RE NOT LIKE ANYONE ELSE 


67 


was soon to be put to use ; so Ruth practiced long in sign- 
ing the name. The description of Cynthia Gail as checked 
on the passport was almost faultless for herself ; height, 
five feet six and a half inches; weight, 118 pounds; face, 
oval; eyes, blue; hair, yellow; and so with all the rest. 
The photograph of Cynthia Gail was pasted upon the pass- 
port and upon it was stamped the seal of the United States, 
as well as a red-ink stamping which went over the edge of 
the photograph upon the paper of the passport. It was 
very possible, Ruth thought, that the German girl for 
whom this passport was intended would have removed that 
picture of Cynthia Gail and substituted one of herself ; to 
do that required an emboss seal of the United States, 
besides the rubber stamp of the red ink. Ruth did not 
doubt that the Germans possessed replicas of these and 
also the skill to forge the substitution. But she possessed 
neither. 

Moreover, the photograph of Cynthia Gail seemed to 
Ruth even more like herself than it had at first. The dif- 
ference was really more in expression than in the 
features themselves; and Ruth, consciously or uncon- 
sciously, had become more like that girl in the picture. 
She had, also, the identical dress in which the picture 
was taken. She determined to wear that when she pre- 
sented the passport and risk the outcome. Her advantage 
so far had been that no one had particular reason to sus- 
pect her; she had fitted herself into the relations already 
arranged to take Cynthia Gail to France and they seemed 
capable, of their own momentum, to carry her on. 

Hubert Lennon “looked by” again later in the after- 
noon and she asked him to tell his aunt that she was going 


68 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


away. He was much concerned and insistent upon doing 
what he could to aid her. 

“ Do you know when you’ll be sailing? ” he asked. 

“ I hope next week,” she said. 

“ Could you possibly go on the Ribot ?” 

“ Why on the Ribot ? ” 

“ Gerry Hull’s just got word that he’s to join again on 
the other side,” Hubert said, “ so he’ll be going back next 
week on the Ribot , he thinks.” 

Ruth checked just in time a “ Yes, I know.” 

“I’m going to try to get across with him,” Hubert 
added. Ruth felt liking again for this young man who 
always put his friend before himself. 

“ That’s good. I hope surely I can get on the Ribot .” 

“Aunt Emilie knows people in New York who’ll help 
arrange it for you, if I ask ’em. You’ll let me?” 

“ Please ! ” Ruth accepted eagerly. She wanted exceed- 
ingly to know one other thing; but she delayed asking 
and then made the query as casual as she could. 

“ Lady Agnes stays in Chicago a while ? ” 

Hubert colored as this question ended for him his pre- 
tense with himself that she wanted to be on the Ribot 
because of him. 

“No; she’s going when Gerry goes. She plans to be 
on the Ribot too. They always intended to return at the 
same time.” 

“Of course,” Ruth said. What wild fancies she fol- 
lowed ! 

Hubert went off ; but returned to take her to the train. 
He brought with him letters from his aunt — credentials 
of Ruth as Cynthia Gail to powerful people who did not 


“ YOU’RE NOT LIKE ANYONE ELSE ” 


69 


know Cynthia Gail, and who were asked to further her 
desires in every way. 

Thus, at the end of seven days, Ruth Alden sailed for 
the first time away from her native land upon the Ribot 
for Bordeaux to become — in the reports of the American 
authorities who approved and passed her on — a worker 
in the devastated districts of France; to become, in what- 
ever report the agents of Hohenzollernism in America 
made to their superiors, a dependable and resourceful spy 
for Germany; to become — in the resolution she swore to 
herself and to the soul of Cynthia Gail and the prayers 
she prayed — an emissary for her cause and her country 
into the land of the enemy who would know no mercy 
to such as herself. 


CHAPTER VI 
" we're fighting ” 

T HERE is a thrill upon awaking on your first morn- 
ing on board a ship at sea which all the German 
U-boats under the ocean can scarcely increase. You may 
imagine all you please what it may be ; and it will amaze 
you with something more. Ruth Alden had imagined; 
and her first forenoon on shipboard was filled with 
surprises. 

She had gone aboard from the New York quay at nine 
the evening before, as she had been warned to do; she 
had looked into her cabin — a small, square white com- 
partment with two bunks, upper and lower, an unuphol- 
stered seat, a washbowl with a looking glass beside the 
porthole and with a sort of built-in bureau with four 
drawers, above which was posted conspicuously the rules 
to be observed in emergencies. These were printed in 
French and English and were illustrated by drawings of 
exactly how to adjust the life-preservers to be found 
under all berths. Someone, whose handbaggage bore the 
initials “M. W.” and who evidently was to share the 
cabin with her, had been in before her and gone out. 
Ruth saw that the steward disposed her cabin baggage 
beside M. W.’s; she shut herself in a moment after the 
steward had gone, touching the pillow of her bunk, read- 
ing the rules again, trying the water-taps. She stood with 
70 


“WE’RE FIGHTING 


71 


shut eyes, breathing deliciously the strange, scrubbed, 
salty smells of a deep-water boat; she opened the door 
and went out to the deck with the darkness of the Hudson 
on one hand; upon the other, the myriad-lighted majesty 
of New York. 

She was standing there at the rail gazing up at the 
marvelous city when Hubert Lennon found her. He 
merely wanted to make sure she was aboard. Gerry Hull 
and Captain Lescault — he was the French officer who 
had spoken at Mrs. Corliss’ — and an English captain, 
For raker, of the same party, were aboard now; Lady 
Agnes and the Englishwomen with whom she traveled 
also were aboard, Hubert said. 

He was glad to find that Cynthia was all right; but 
he said that a nasty sea was running outside; the 
Ribot might go out at any time. Hubert thought 
Cynthia had better go to bed and get all the sleep she 
could. 

Ruth went below, not with any idea of sleeping, but to 
avoid meeting Gerry Hull just yet. That she was aboard 
the Ribot under orders did not undo the fact that she was 
here for the conscious purpose of furthering her acquaint- 
ance with him. He must guess that, she thought — he 
from whom she had heard nothing at all since that after- 
noon at Mrs. Corliss’. 

Ruth was ready for bed when someone put a key in 
the cabin door, but knocked before turning it, and a girl’s 
pleasant voice inquired, “All right to come in? ” 

“All right,” R.uth said, covering up in bed. 

A dark-haired, dark-eyed girl of twenty-six or seven 
entered. “ I’m Milicent Wetherell,” she introduced her- 


72 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


self. “I’m from St. Louis; I’m going to Paris for work 
in a vestiaire” 

Ruth sat up and put out her hand ; she liked this girl 
on sight. “I’m Ru Cynthia Gail of Decatur, Illi- 

nois,” she caught herself swiftly. It was the first time in 
the eight days that she had been Cynthia that she had 
made even so much of a slip; but Milicent Wetherell did 
not notice it. 

Milicent went to bed and turned out the light. The 
boat did not move; and after indefinite hours of lying still 
in the dark, Ruth dropped to sleep. When she awoke it 
was daylight; the ship was swaying, falling, rising; the 
tremor of engines shook it. They were at sea. 

The waves were higher than any Ruth had encountered 
before, but they were slower and smoother too — not 
nearly so jumpy and choppy as the Lake Michigan surf 
in a strong wind. The big steamer rose and rolled to 
them far more steadily than the vessels upon which Ruth 
had voyaged on holidays on the lake. Milicent Wetherell, 
in the lower berth, lay miserably awake with no desire 
whatever to get up ; but Ruth let the stewardess lead her 
to the bath; she dressed and found the way to the dining- 
saloon. She was supplied, along with a number designat- 
ing her “ abandon ship ” place in starboard lifeboat No. 7, 
a numeral for a seat at a table. 

At this hour of half after nine, there were perhaps 
fifty men at breakfast and just five other women or girls; 
four men were seated at the table to which Ruth was led 
— Captain Forraker one of them. He arose as she ap- 
proached. Possibly he remembered her, Ruth thought, 
from an introduction at Mrs. Corliss’ ; much more prob- 


WE’RE FIGHTING” 


73 


ably Hubert Lennon — who undoubtedly had had her 
placed at this table — had reminded Captain Forraker 
about her. His three table-companions arose and Captain 
Forraker presented them to her; they were all English — 
two young officers and one older man, in rank a colonel, 
who had been about some ordnance inspection work in 
America. Ruth sat down; they sat down and resumed 
their talk; and Ruth got the first of her morning amaze- 
ments. She was in a foreign land, already ; she was not 
just on the way there, though still in sight of Long Island. 
She was now in Europe, with Europeans thinking and 
talking, not as guests of America, but as Europeans at 
home again. 

Ruth had been brought up, as a good American, to 
believe her country the greatest in the world; and, im- 
plicitly, she believed it. She recognized that sons and 
daughters of other nations likewise were reared to believe 
their native land the best and their people the noblest; 
but she never had been able to quite believe that they 
really could think so. They must make an exception, 
down deep in their consciousness, for America, she was 
sure; however loyal they might be to their own institu- 
tions and to their own fellows, they must admire more 
highly the American ideals of freedom and democracy, 
and they must consider that the people who lived by and 
for those ideals were potentially, at least, the greatest. 

It was a momentous experience, therefore, to hear her 
country discussed — not in an unfriendly way or even with 
prejudice, but by open-minded foreigners trying to inform 
one another of the facts about America as they had found 
them; America was a huge but quite untried quantity; 


74 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


its institutions and ideals seemed to them interesting, but 
on the whole not nearly so good as their own ; certainly 
there was no suggestion of their endowing Americans 
with superior battle abilities, therefore. The nation — 
that nation founded more than a hundred and forty years 
ago which was to Ruth the basis of all being — was to 
them simply an experiment of which no one could yet 
tell the outcome. 

They did not say that, of course; they said nothing at 
all to which she could take the slightest exception. They 
simply brought to her the brevity and unconclusiveness 
of a century of independent existence in the perspective 
of a thousand; their national thought started not with 
1776 but with the Conquest or, even earlier, when the 
Roman legions abandoned Britain and King Arthur 
reigned. 

When they spoke of their homes, 'as they did once, and 
Ruth found opportunity to inquire of one of them how 
long he had had his home in Sussex, he told her : 

“The present house goes back to 1582.” 

It rather made her gasp. No wonder that a man of a 
family which had occupied the “present” house since be- 
fore the Pilgrims sailed, looked upon America as an 
unproved venture. 

“They’re in it to the end now, I consider,” this man 
commented later to his companion when they returned to 
the discussion of America and the war. 

“Quite so, probably,” the other said. “The South 
went to absolute exhaustion in their Civil War.” 

“Absolutely,” the Sussex man agreed. “ North prob- 
ably would have too, if necessary.” 


WE’RE FIGHTING 


75 


They were estimating American will and endurance, 
not by pretty faiths and protestations, but by what Ameri- 
cans, in their short history, had actually shown. 

“ But this is foreign war, of course;’’ the colonel quali- 
fied the judgment dubiously. 

The man whose “ present” house went back to 1582 
nodded thoughtfully. 

Ruth received all this eagerly; it could not in the least 
shake her own confidence in her people; but it gave her 
better comprehension of the ideas which Gerry Hull had 
gained from his association with Europeans. And this 
morning, when she was certain to meet him, she wished 
— oh she wished to an incredible degree — to understand 
him more fully than before. She learned from a remark 
of Captain For raker’s that Gerry Hull and Lady Agnes 
had breakfasted early and had gone out on deck. Ruth 
had intended to go on deck after breakfast; but now she 
changed her mind. She went to the saloon; and hardly 
was she there, when Gerry Hull and Lady Agnes came 
in from the cold. 

They were laughing together at something which had 
happened without. Ruth saw them before either of them 
noticed her; and her heart halted in the excitement of 
expectancy during the instant Gerry Hull’s glance went 
about the saloon. He saw her ; nodded to her and looked 
at once to Lady Agnes, who immediately advanced to 
Ruth, greeting her cordially and with perfect recollection 
of having talked with her at Mrs. Corliss’. Upon this 
French ship bound for Europe, the English girl was at 
home as the Englishmen at the breakfast table had been; 
she felt herself, in a sense, a hostess of Ruth. 


76 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“You’ve been about the ship yet, Miss Gail?” Gerry 
Hull asked. 

“ Only a little last night,” Ruth said. 

“ Come out on deck then,” he invited her. “ Done for 
just now, Agnes?” he asked. 

“Just now,” Agnes said. “But I know you’re not. 
Go on ! ” she bid, smiling at him as his eyes came to hers. 

Ruth saw it as she started away to her cabin for her 
coat. There had been some concern — not much, but 
some — in Agnes Ertyle’s look that first time she dis- 
covered Gerry Hull and Ruth together; there was no 
suggestion of concern now. 

“Hub’s sick, poor chap,” Gerry told Ruth when she 
came out and they set off side by side up the promenade 
deck against the cold, winter wind. “ He wanted me to 
tell you that’s why he couldn’t look you up this morning.” 

Had Hub — her loyal, self-derogatory Hub — there- 
fore arranged with his friend to give her this attention, 
Ruth wondered. Not that Gerry Hull offered himself 
perfunctorily; he was altogether too well bred for that. 
He held out his hand to her as the wind threatened to 
sweep her from her feet; she locked arms with him and 
together they struggled forward to the bow where a spray 
shield protected them and they turned to each other and 
rested. 

“Pretty good out here, isn’t it?” he asked, drawing 
deep breaths of the cold, salt air, his dark cheeks glowing. 

“Glorious!” Ruth cried. “I never she checked 

herself quickly, almost forgetting. 

“Crossed in winter before?” 

“ No.” 


WE’RE FIGHTING 


77 


“ Neither ’ve I — in real winter weather; except when 
coming home this last time.” 

Ruth glanced up at him and caught his eyes pondering 
her. He had meant merely to be courteous to her when 
meeting her on shipboard; but too much had passed be- 
tween them, in their brief, tempestuous first meeting. He 
was feeling that as well as she ! The gage which she had 
thrown before him was not to be ignored. However 
certainly he may have thought that he would be merely 
polite to this girl who had — he deemed — insulted his 
comrades and himself, however determinedly he had 
planned to chat with her about wind and weather, he 
wanted to really talk with her now ! And however firmly 
Ruth had decided to avoid any word which could possibly 
offend him, still she found herself replying: 

“Then you think of Chicago as your home?” 

“Of course; why not?” 

She turned her back more squarely to the wind and 
gazed down the length of the deck, hesitating. 

“I might as well own up, Miss Gail,” he said to her 
suddenly. “ I’m still mad.” 

“At me ? ” 

“At you. For a while I was so mad that I didn’t want 
to see you or think of you,” he admitted with the frank- 
ness which had enabled him to ask her, directly, how she 
happened to be at Mrs. Corliss’. “ But that didn’t seem 
to do me any good. So I called up your hotel ” 

“You did? When?” 

“After you were gone — about two days after. They 
had no address for you and Hub had none. I asked 
him.” 


78 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


Ruth trembled with joyous excitement. 

“ I wanted to tell you better what I meant,” he went on. 
“And to find out more from you.” 

“About?” 

“What we’d been arguing. I told you that day I’d 
never had a chance to talk over affairs with an American 
like you ; and I hadn’t later. 

“ You see,” he explained after a moment of thought, 
“ it seemed to me that the other people I met at home — or 
most of them, anyway — went into the war as a sort of 
social event. I don’t mean that they made light of it; 
they didn’t. They were heart and soul in the cause ; and 
a good many of them did a lot of real work. But they 
didn’t react to any — original ideas, as far as I could 
make out. They imported their opinions and sympathies. 
And the ones who were hottest to have America in the 
war weren’t the people who’d been most of their lives in 
America; but the ones who’d been in England or France. 
I told you that day that what they said was just what I’d 
been hearing on the other side.” 

In spite of the canvas shield, it was very cold where 
they were standing. Gerry moved a bit as he talked ; and 
Ruth stepped with him, letting him lead her to a door 
which he opened, to discover a little writing room or card 
room which happened to be deserted just then. He 
motioned to her to precede him ; and when she sat down 
upon one of the upholstered chairs fixed before a table, 
he took the place opposite, tossing his cap away and loosen- 
ing his coat. She unbuttoned her coat and pulled off her 
heavy gloves. She had made no reply, and he seemed to 
expect none, but to be satisfied with her waiting. 


WE’RE FIGHTING 


79 


“I suppose you’re thinking that’s the way I got my 
opinions too,” he said. “ But it’s not quite true. I wasn’t 
trying to be English or French or foreign in any way. 
I was proud — not ashamed — to be American. Why, at 
school in England they used to have a regular game to 
get me started bragging about America and Chicago and 
our West. I liked the people over there; but I liked our 
people better. Grandfather — well, he seemed to me 
about the greatest sort of man possible; and his friends 
and father’s friends who used to come to look me up at 
Harrow once in a while — some of ’em were pretty raw 
and uncouth, but I liked to show ’em off ! I did. They’d 
all done something themselves; and most of ’em were 
still doing things — big things — and putting in eight or 
ten hours a day in their offices. They weren’t gentlemen at 
all in the sense that my friends at Harrow knew English 
gentlemen ; but I said they were the real thing. America 
— my country — was made up of men who really did 
things ! 

“Then the war came and showed us up! I tell you. 
Miss Gail, I couldn’t believe it at first. It seemed to me 
that the news couldn’t be getting across to America; or 
that lies only were reaching you. Then the American 
newspapers came to France and everyone could see that 
we knew and stayed out ! ” 

“Last week,” Ruth said, “and yesterday; and before I 
met you this morning, I knew how to tell you what I tried 
to that day at Mrs. Corliss’. I’ve thought more about 
that, I’m sure, than anything else recently; but now — ” 
she gazed across the little table at him and shook her 
head — “it’s no use. It’s not anything one can argue, I 


80 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


guess. It’s just faith and feeling — faith in our own 
people, Lieutenant Hull ! ” 

She saw, as he watched her, that she was disappointing 
him and that he had been hoping that, somehow, she could 
resolve the doubts of his own people which possessed him ; 
she saw — as she had observed at Mrs. Corliss’ — that his 
eyes lingered upon her face, upon her hands, as though he 
liked her ; but her stubbornness in upholding those people 
whom she would not even try to explain, offended him 
again. He glanced out the port above her. 

“ We’re picking up a cruiser escort,” he said suddenly. 
“ Let’s go out and look her over.” 

So they were on deck in the cold and wind again. And 
during the rest of that day, and upon the following days, 
almost every hour brought her into some sort of associa- 
tion with him on the decks, in the lounge, or in the writing 
rooms, during the morning; luncheon at the same table. 
Then the afternoon, as the morning, would be made up of 
hours when she would be sitting in the warm, bright 
saloon with her French war-study book before her and 
she would be carefully rehearsing “Masque respirateur — 
respirator; lunettes — goggles; nauge de gaz — gas 
fumes . . . when she would hear his quick, impulsive 
step or his clear, pleasant voice speaking to someone and 
Ruth would get combat anime and combat de cousu hope- 
lessly mixed. She would go out to walk the deck again 
with Hubert — who was apologetically up and about 
when the seas were smoother — or with Captain Lescault 
or Captain Forraker or with “1582” (as she called to 
herself the Sussex officer and once came near calling him 
that aloud), when she would come around the corner of 


WE’RE FIGHTING 


81 


a cabin and almost run into Agnes Ertyle and Gerry Hull 
going about the deck in the other direction ; or she would 
pass them, seated close together and with Lady Agnes all 
bundled up in steamer rugs, and Ruth would see them 
suddenly stop talking when she and her escort came close, 
and they would look away at the sea as though they had 
been just looking at the water all the time. 

He would sit down beside Ruth, too; and he would 
take her around and around the deck, tramping glowing, 
spray-splattered miles with him. They talked a lot; but 
now they never really said anything to each other. And 
it seemed to Ruth that each throb of those ceaseless 
engines, which thrust them ever nearer and nearer to 
France, made what she felt and believed more outrageous 
to him. 

One afternoon, when the wireless happened to be 
tuned to catch the wavelength of messages sweeping over 
the seas from some powerful sending station in Germany, 
they picked up the enemy’s boasts for the day ; and among 
them was the announcement that the famous American 
“ace,” sergeant pilot Paul Crosby, had been shot down 
and killed by a German flyer on the Lorraine front. It 
chanced that Gerry Hull and Agnes Ertyle were in the 
main saloon near where Ruth also was when some busy- 
body, who had heard this news, brought it to Gerry Hull 
and asked him if he had known Paul Crosby. 

Ruth knew that Gerry Hull and Paul Crosby had joined 
the French flying forces together; they had flown in the 
same escadrille for more than a year. She did not turn 
about, as others were doing, to watch Gerry Hull when 
he got this news ; but she could not help hearing his simple 


82 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


and quiet reply, which brought tears to her eyes as no sob 
or protestation of grief could; and she could not help see- 
ing him as he passed before her on his way out alone to 
the deck. 

She dreamed that night about being torpedoed ; in the 
dream, the boat was the Ribot ; and upon the vessel there 
were — as almost always there are in dreams — a per- 
fectly impossible company. Besides those who actually 
were on board, there were Sam Hilton and Lieutenant 
George Byrne and “Aunt Emilie” and Aunt Cynthia 
Gifford Grange and the woman in gray and a great many 
others — so many, indeed, that there were not boats 
enough on the Ribot to take off all the company as the 
ship sank. So Gerry Hull, after putting Lady Agnes in 
a boat and kissing her good-bye, himself stepped back to 
go down with the ship ; and so, when all the boats were 
gone, he found Ruth beside him ; for she had known that 
he would not try to save himself and she had hidden to 
stay with him. His arms were about her as the water rose 
to them and — she awoke. 

Their U-boat really came ; but with results disconcert- 
ingly different. January, 1918 — if you can remember 
clearly back to days so strange and distant — was a month 
when America was sending across men by tens rather 
than by hundreds of thousands and convoying them very, 
very carefully; there were not so many destroyers as soon 
there were; the U-boats had not yet raided far out into 
the Atlantic — so fast and well-armed ships like the Ribot, 
which were not transports, were allowed to proceed a cer- 
tain part of the way across unconvoyed, keeping merely 
to certain “ lanes ” on courses prescribed by wireless. 


“WE’RE FIGHTING 


83 


The Ribot, Ruth knew, was on one of these lanes and 
soon would be “picked up” by the destroyers and shep- 
herded by them into a convoy for passage through the 
zone of greatest danger. In fact, Ruth and Milicent 
Wetherell, who also had awakened early upon this par- 
ticular morning, were looking out of their port over a 
gray and misty sea to discover whether they might have 
been picked up during the night and now were in a con- 
voy. But they saw no sign of any other vessel, though 
the mist, which was patchy and floating low, let them 
look a mile or more away. There was no smoke in sight 
— nothing but gray clouds and the frayed fog and the 
sea swelling oilily up and slipping down against the side 
of the ship. 

Then, about a hundred yards away from the side and 
rather far forward, a spout of spray squirted suddenly 
straight up into the air. It showered over toward the ship 
and splashed down. 

“ That’s a shot,” Ruth said, “ at us.” 

“Where’s the U-boat?” Milicent asked her; and they 
both pressed closer to the port to look out. They had 
heard no sound of the gun, or they did not distinguish it 
from the noises of the ship. Ruth was shaking with 
excitement; she could feel Milicent shaking too. Another 
spout of spray, still forward but a good deal closer, 
spurted up; and this time they heard — or thought they 
heard — the sound of the gun which had fired that shell 
at them. The roar of their own guns — one forward and 
one aft — buffeted them violently. 

“We’re fighting!” Ruth cried. 

“Can you see anything?” Milicent demanded. 


84 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“ Not a thing. Let’s get dressed ! ” 

Gongs were beating throughout the ship; and the guns 
on deck were going, “ T wumm ! twumm ! twumni ! ” Ruth 
could hear, in the intervals, the voices of stewards calling 
to passengers in the companionways between the cabins. 
A tremendous shock, stifling and deafening, hurled Ruth 
against the bunk ; hurled Milicent upon her. They clung 
together, coughing and gasping for breath. 

“Hit us!” Ruth said; she might have shouted; she 
might have whispered ; she did not know which. 

“That’s just powder fumes; not gas,” Milicent made 
herself understood. 

“No; not nauge de gaz,” Ruth agreed. They were 
hearing each other quite normally; and they laughed at 
each other — at the French lesson phrase, rather. They 
had learned the phrases together, drilled each other and 
taken the lessons so seriously ; and the lessons seemed so 
silly now. 

“ They must have hurt someone,” Ruth said. For the 
first time she consciously thought of Gerry Hull ; probably 
subconsciously she had been thinking of him all the time. 
“He wasn’t hit,” she was saying to herself confidently 
now. “ That shell struck us forward ; his cabin’s aft and 
on the other side ; so he couldn’t have been hurt — unless 
he’d come to this side to get Lady Agnes.” 

Another shell exploded in the ship — aft somewhere 
and lower. It didn’t knock Ruth down or stifle her with 
fumes as the other had. Someone was beating at her 
door and she opened it — Milicent and she had got into 
their clothes. Ruth saw Hubert Lennon in the pas- 
sage. 


WE’RE FIGHTING 


85 


“ You’re safe ! ” he cried out to her with mighty relief. 
He had pulled trousers and coat over his pajamas ; he had 
shoes, unlaced, upon his bare feet. He was without his 
glasses and his nearsighted eyes blinked big and blankly; 
he had on a life-jacket, of the sort under all berths; but 
he bore in his hands a complete life-suit with big boots 
into which one stepped and which had a bag top to go up 
about the neck. 

“ Put this on! ” he thrust it at Ruth. 

“We’re not sinking,” she replied. “Oh, thank you; 
thank you — but we aren’t torpedoed — not yet. They’re 
just firing and we’re fighting — ” indeed she was shout- 
ing to be heard after the noise of their guns — “we must 
have people hurt.” 

“We’ve a lot — a lot hurt,” Hubert said. 

Other shells were striking the ship ; and Ruth went by 
him into a passage confused with smoke and stumbly 
from things strewn under her feet; a cabin door hung 
open and beyond the door, the side of the ship gaped 
suddenly to the sea. The sides of the gap were jagged 
and split and splintered wood ; a ripped mattress, bedding, 
a man’s coat and shirt, a woman’s clothing lay strewn 
all about; the bedding smouldered and from under it a 
hand projected — a man’s hand. It clasped and opened 
convulsively; Ruth stopped and grasped the hand; it 
caught hers very tight and, still holding and held by it, 
Ruth with her other hand cleared the bedding from off 
the man’s face. She recognized him at once; he was an 
oldish, gentle but fearless little man — an American who 
had been a missionary in Turkey; he and his wife, who 
had worked with him, had been to America to raise money 


86 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


for Armenian relief and had been on their way back 
together to their perilous post. 

“ Mattie ? ” the little man was asking anxiously of Ruth 
as he looked up at her. “ Mattie ? ” 

Mattie, Ruth knew, must have been his wife; and she 
turned back the bedding beyond him. 

“ She’s gone,” Ruth told him, mercifully thrusting him 
back as he tried to turn about. “ She’s gone where you are 
going.” 

The little missionary’s eyes closed. “ The order for all 
moneys is in my pocket. Luke vi, 27,” his lips murmured. 
“ Luke vi, 27 and 35.” 

The hand which again was holding Ruth’s and which 
had been so strong the instant before, was quiet now. 
“The sixth chapter of the gospel according to St. Luke 
and the twenty-seventh verse,” the little man’s voice mur- 
mured, “But I say unto you which hear, Love your 
enemies.” 

Ruth covered his face decently with the sheet; and, 
rising, she grasped the jagged edges of the hole blown by 
the German shell in the side of the ship; and she stared 
out it. A mile and a half away; two miles or more per- 
haps — she could not tell — but at any rate just where the 
fringe of the mist stopped sight, she saw a long, low shape 
scudding over the swell of the sea; puffs of haze of a 
different quality hung over it, cleared and hung again. 
Ruth understood that these were the gases from guns 
firing — the guns which had sent that shell which had 
slain in their beds the little Armenian missionary and his 
wife, the guns which were sending the shells now burst- 
ing aboard the Ribot further below and more astern. 


WE’RE FIGHTING 


87 


Ruth gazed at the U-boat aghast with fury — fury and 
loathing beyond any feeling which she could have 
imagined. She had supposed she had known full loathing 
when she learned of the first deeds done in Termonde and 
Louvain; then she had thought, when the Germans sank 
the Lusitania, that it was utterly impossible for her to 
detest fellow-men more than those responsible. But now 
she knew that any passion previously stirred within her 
was only the weak and vacuous reaction to a tale which 
was told. She had viewed her first dead slain by a fellow- 
man; and amazing, all overwhelming instincts — an urge 
to kill, kill in return, kill in punishment, kill in revenge — 
possessed her. She had not meant to kill before. She 
had thought of saving life — saving the Belgians from 
more barbarities, saving the lives of those at sea; she had 
thought of her task ahead, and of the risks she was to run, 
as saving the lives of American and British and French 
soldiers. For the first time she thought of herself as an 
instrument to kill — kill Germans, many, many Germans ; 
all that she could. 

Someone had come into the wreck of that cabin behind 
her now. A steward, probably ; or perhaps Hubert Len- 
non, who had found her again. She did not turn but con- 
tinued to stare at the U-boat, her hands clinging to the 
jagged hole made by its shell. A man’s hand caught her 
shoulder and a voice spoke to her — Gerry Hull’s voice. 

“ Come with me,” he was saying to her. “ You cannot 
stay here; come to a safer place.” 

“A safer place ! ” she repeated to him. “ How can we 
help to kill them on that boat ? ” she cried to him. 

He was undoing her fingers, by main strength, from 


88 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


their clutch at the jagged iron of the shell hole. He was 
very calm and quiet and strong ; and he was controlling her 
as though she were a child. 

“They’re four thousand yards off,” he said to her. 
“ That one there and another on the other side. It’s just 
begun to fire.” 

Some of the shells which had been striking, Ruth 
realized now, had burst on the other side of the Ribot. 

“Yes,” she said. 

“ We’ve signaled we’re attacked,” he told her. He had 
both her hands free; and he bound her arms to her body 
with his arms. “We’ve an answer, and destroyers are 
coming. But they can’t get up before an hour or two; so 
we’ve a long fight on. You must come below.” 

He was half carrying her, ignominiously ; and it came 
to Ruth that, before seeking her, he had gone to Agnes 
Ertyle ; but she had not delayed him because she was used 
to being under fire, used to seeing those slain by fellow- 
men ; used to knowing what she could and could not do. 

“ I’ll go where — I should,” Ruth promised, looking up 
at him ; and he released her. 

He pointed her toward a companionway where steps 
had led downward a few minutes before; but now they 
were broken and smoke at that moment was beginning to 
pour up. He turned and led her off to the right; but a 
shell struck before them there and hurled them back with 
the shock of its detonation. It skewed around a sheet of 
steel which had been a partition wall between two cabins ; 
it blew down doors and strewed debris of all sorts down 
upon them. Another shell, striking aft, choked and closed 
escape in the other direction. Gerry Hull threw himself 


WE’RE FIGHTING 


89 


against the sheet of thin steel which the shell so swiftly 
and easily had spread over the passage ; but all his strength 
could not budge it. He turned back to Ruth and looked 
her over. 

“All right ? ” he asked her. 

“You are too?” 

He turned from her and gazed through the side of the 
ship. “ They’ve got our range pretty well, I should say. 
They’re still firing both their guns, and we don’t seem to 
be hitting much.” 

He tried again to bend back the sheet of steel which 
penned them in the passage, but with effort as vain as 
before. 

“ I guess we stay here for a while,” he said when he 
desisted. “If we don’t get help and it looks like we’re 
going to sink, we can always dive through there into the 
sea.” 

A shell smashed in below and a few rods forward and 
burst with terrific detonation. 

“ Huns seem to like this part of the ship,” he said when 
the shock was past. 

“That started something burning just below,” Ruth 
said. 

Throughout the ship again, between the concussion of 
the striking shells and the firing of the Rib of s guns, 
alarm gongs were going. 

A woman screamed ; men’s shouts came in answer. The 
rush of the Ribot through the water, which had been swift 
and steady since the start of the fight, suddenly swerved 
and the ship veered off to the right. 

“ What’s that ? ” Ruth said. 


90 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“We may be zigzagging to dodge torpedoes,” Gerry 
Hull said. “ Or it may be that our helm is shot away and 
we can’t steer ; or we may be changing course to charge a 
sub in close.” 

A detonation closer than any before quite stunned Ruth 
for seconds or minutes or longer — she did not know. 
Only when she came to herself slowly, she was alone be- 
hind the sheet of steel. Gerry Hull was gone. 


CHAPTER VII 


“one of our own!” 

T HE deck floor just beyond her, where he had been, 
was gone; or rather — as she saw now through 
the smoke — it slanted steeply down like a chute into a 
chasm of indefinite depth from which the heavy, stifling 
smoke was pouring. A draft sucked the smoke out of the 
shattered side of the ship over the sea and gave Ruth 
cleaner air to breathe for seconds at a time. Gerry Hull 
must have been hurled into that chasm when that last 
detonation blew away the floor; or else he must have flung 
himself into the sea. 

Ruth called his name, shouting first into the smoke 
column and then, creeping down to the shell hole in the 
side, she thrust her head out and gazed at the sea. Wreck- 
age from the upper deck — wooden chairs, bits of canvas 
— swept backwards; she saw no one swimming. The 
splash of the waves dashed upon her, the ship was rushing 
onward, but not so swiftly as before, and with a distinct 
change in the thrust of the engines and with a strange 
sensation of strain on the ship. Only one engine was 
going, Ruth decided — the port engine; it was being 
forced faster and faster to do the work of both and the 
rudder was pulled against the swerve of the port screw 
to keep the vessel from swinging in a circle. 

The guns on deck were firing steadily, it seemed; but 
91 


92 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


the German submarine, which Ruth could see and which 
had begun to drop behind when the Ribot was racing with 
both engines, was drawing up abreast again with both its 
big rifles firing. But the Rib of s guns, if they had not yet 
hit that U-boat, at least had driven her away ; for, though 
she came up abreast, the German kept farther off than 
before; and while Ruth watched, she heard a sudden, wild 
cheer from the deck; French shells had gone home some- 
where on that U-boat or upon the other which Ruth could 
not see. 

Smoke continued to sweep by Ruth, engulfing her for 
long moments, but the fire was far enough below not to 
immediately threaten her. So for the minute she was as 
safe as she could be anywhere Upon that long flank of the 
ship at which the U-boats were firing. At any instant, a 
shell might obliterate her ; but she could not influence that 
by any thought or action of her own. So she thought no 
more about it. She could possibly influence the fate of 
Gerry Hull. He had been flung down that chute of the 
deck floor, she thought ; the shell might have killed him ; 
it might only have wounded or stunned him. In that case, 
he must be lying helpless down there where the flames 
were. She took long breaths of sea air and crept back 
and called again into the smoke ; she thought she heard a 
man's cry in response ; Gerry Hull’s voice. She returned 
to the hole in the side of the ship and let the waves drench 
her face and her hair; she caught up her skirt and soaked 
it in the splash of the sea. 

The firing of the guns was keeping up all this time; 
the shock of shells bursting aboard the ship also continued. 
But the tug and thrust of the single engine had stopped; 


“ ONE OF OUR OWN 


93 


the vessel vibrated only at the firing of its own guns or at 
the detonation of a German shell. 

Ruth took a towel which she found at her hand — she 
was in the wreck of someone’s cabin — and, after soaking 
it, she bound it about her head and crept back through the 
smoke to where the steel chute of the floor slanted* sheer. 

She dropped and fell upon a heap of sharp, shattered 
things which cut her ankles and stumbled her over on 
hands and knees upon debris* not flaming itself, but warm 
from a fire which burned lower. She lifted the towel from 
her eyes to try to see; but the smoke blinded her; she 
could not breathe; and she bound the towel again and 
crawled off the heap of smoldering things upon a linoleum. 
She heard a moan; but she could not find anyone in the 
smoke, though she called thickly several times. A cur- 
rent of air was sweeping over the floor and, following it, 
she came to a huge rent in the ship’s side where water 
washed in and out as the vessel rolled. The water had 
ceased to move from bow to stern; the vessel was merely 
drifting. A man floated, face downward, upon a wave 
which washed him almost to the ship’s side. Ruth reached 
out to seize him; she touched his shoulder — a blue-clad 
shoulder, the uniform of the French; but she could get no 
hold ; the sea drew him slowly away. 

“ Gerry Hull ! Gerry ! ” she called, as though that form 
in the French coat, with head under the water, could hear. 
The next wash brought it back toward the ship ; but also 
drifted it farther to the stern. Now Ruth found among 
the rubbish washing at her feet a floating thing — a life- 
jacket. She thrust her arms in it and when the waves 
washed that blue-clad form nearer the next time, she 


94 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


leaped into the sea and swam toward it and got grasp of a 
sleeve and struggled back toward the ship. 

The vessel’s side towered above her, mighty and menac- 
ing ; it swung away from her, showing a long steep slant 
to the gray sky ; it swung back and tilted over as though 
to crush her; wreckage slipped from off its topmost tier 
and splashed into the sea beside her. She could see the 
cloud of gun gases puff out and clear; then the flash of 
firing again. All the time she was thrashing with one 
arm to swim in the wash beside the vessel and drag the 
blue-clad form. That form was heavier now; and, as her 
clutch numbed, it slipped from her and sank. She spun 
about and tried to dive, groping with her hands below the 
surface; but the form was gone. 

“ Gerry Hull!” she cried out. “I had Gerry Hull — 
here!” 

A coil of rope struck the water near her; men yelled to 
her to seize it; but she groped below the water until, 
exhausted from the cold, she looped the rope about her 
and they pulled her up. 

“Lieutenant Gerry Hull was in the water there,” she 
cried to them who took her in their arms. “ Lieutenant 
Gerry Hull is ” — she shouted to the next man who took 
her when, looking up, she saw his face. 

Silence — a marvelous stilling of the guns which had 
been resounding from fore and aft ; a miraculous stopping 
of the frightful shock of the shells which had been burst- 
ing in the ship — enveloped Ruth. She did not know at 
first whether it was because some of her senses were gone ; 
she could see Gerry Hull’s face, feel his arms holding her 
and the rhythm of his body as he stepped, carrying her; 


“ONE OF OUR OWN 


95 


she could hear his voice and the voices of others close by; 
but all other sound and reverberation had ceased. 

“ I was separated from you/’ Gerry Hull was explaining 
to her. “ I was coming back to try and get you out.” 

“ I went down the way you fell,” she replied to him. 
“ Then I saw a man in the sea. I thought he was you. 
I tried to get him.” 

She was silent for a few moments while he carried her; 
the miracle of stillness continued; but it was a great effort 
for her to speak. 

“ I would have done it for anyone.” 

“ I know you would,” he said to her. 

“You’ve seen Hubert?” she asked. 

“ He’s not among the hurt,” Gerry answered. 

She was quite certain now that the stillness had con- 
tinued so long that it could not be merely the interval 
between firing or between the arrival of German shells. 

“ What is it? ” she asked him. 

“ What is what, Cynthia Gail ? ” 

He called her whole name, as he knew it, as she had 
been calling his. “ We’re not fighting,” she said. “ We 
haven’t surrendered or — are we sinking?” 

“A destroyer’s come in sight,” he said. “ It’s fighting 
one of the Huns. Listen ! ” He halted for an instant to 
let her hear the distant sound of guns. 

“ I hear it,” she said. 

“We hit that U-boat, we think, so that it can’t sub- 
merge and has to keep fighting on the surface. The other’s 
submerged.” 

He brought her down a stairway into some large com- 
partment, evidently below the water line ; it seemed to have 


96 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


been a dining saloon for the steerage when the Ribot had 
been regularly in the passenger trade; or perhaps it had 
been crews’ quarters. Now it was a hospital; cots had 
been laid out and those who had been injured by the shell 
fire had been brought there. They were a great many, 
it seemed to Ruth — thirty or forty. She had never seen 
so many suffering people, so many bandages, so mucti 
blood before. The ship’s surgeon was moving among 
them; women were there — quiet, calm, competent 
women. One had direction of the others and Ruth gazed 
at her for moments before she recognized Agnes Ertyle 
with her beautiful, sweet eyes become maturely stem and, 
at the same time, marvelously compassionate. If Ruth 
were a man, she must love that girl, she thought; love 
her now as never before. Ruth looked up to Gerry Hull 
to see his face when he spoke to Lady Agnes ; he evidently 
witnessed no new marvel in her. He had seen her like 
this before, undoubtedly; that was why he loved her. 

“ I’m not hurt,” Ruth said, ashamed of herself for hav- 
ing been brought to this place among so many who had 
been terribly wounded. “I’ve just been in the water; 
I’m wet, that’s all.” She moved to release herself from 
Gerry’s hold. 

“She went into the sea to save a man,” Gerry told 
Agnes Ertyle. 

“Let me go to the cabin,” Ruth said, as she stood a 
little dizzily. 

Lady Agnes grasped her hand. “If your cabin’s been 
wrecked, go to mine — number twenty-six — and take 
any of my things,” she invited. “ Get dry and warm at 
once.” 


“ ONE OF OUR OWN ” 


97 


She motioned to someone who gave Ruth hot, strong 
tea to drink. Gerry turned with Ruth and led her up the 
stairs down which he had just carried her; he saw her to 
the door of her cabin, which had not been wrecked; he 
saw that a stewardess was there to aid her. Then he 
went. 

The stewardess helped Ruth undress and rubbed her 
and put on warm and heavy things. Milicent Wetherell 
came to the cabin; she had escaped uninjured, and she 
aided also. 

The rifles on the Ribot’s deck rang out suddenly; they 
fired twice; again twice; and were still. Ruth had on 
warm, dry clothes now; and she ran out with Milicent 
Wetherell to the deck. While the Ribot had been under 
shell fire, passengers had been kept from the decks; but 
now that the sole danger was from torpedoes, the decks 
had become the safest place. 

The gun crews had seen — Ruth was told — what they 
thought was a periscope and had fired. There was noth- 
ing in sight now near the Ribot but the wreckage which 
had fallen during the fight. Far off to the right, the 
U-boat which had continued to run on the surface, had 
withdrawn beyond the range of the Ribot’ s guns and was 
fleeing away to the south, fighting as it fled. The morn- 
ing light had quite cleared the mist from the surface of 
the ocean and Ruth could see the low line of the German 
boat obscuring itself with gun-gases as its rifles fired. 
But its shells no longer burst aboard the passenger vessel 
or spurted up spray from the sea alongside. Far, far to 
the east and north appeared a speck — a gray, sea-colored 
speck, sheathing itself in the sparkling white of foam 


98 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


every second or so, casting the sheath of seaspray aside 
and rushing on gray and dun again — the bow of the 
destroyer coming up. She was coming up very fast — 
with a marvelous, leaping swiftness which sent the blood 
tingling through Ruth. 

The destroyer seemed hurled through the water, so fast 
she came; it seemed impossible that engines, turning 
screws, could send a ship on as that vessel dashed; she 
seemed to advance hundreds of yards at a leap, hurling 
the spray high before her and screened by it for a flash; 
and when she thrust through the foam and cut clear away 
from it, she was larger and clearer and nearer. And, as 
she came, she fought. Her guns were going — one, two, 
three of them! Ruth could see the gossamer of their 
gases as they puffed forward and were swept backward; 
she could hear on the wind the resound of the quick firers. 
Steadily, rhythmically, relentlessly they rang, beating over 
the sea like great bells booming in vengeance for the 
Ribot’s dead. 

Ruth felt lifted up, glorified as by nothing she had ever 
known before. She turned to the man who had come up 
beside her; he was Gerry Hull and, as he looked over the 
sea at the destroyer, she saw the blood burning red, paling, 
and burning bright again in his face. 

“ What ship is that ? ” Ruth cried to him. “ Do you 
know whether it’s English or French or our own?” 

“ It’s the Starke !” Gerry Hull replied. “The U. S. S. 
Starke, she reported herself to us ! She made thirty-one 
knots the hour on her builder’s trial two years ago; but 
she promised us to make the forty miles to us in an hour 
and ten minutes ! And she’s beating that, if I know speed. 


“ ONE OF OUR OWN ” 


99 


God,” he appealed in reverent wonder, “look at her 
come ! ” 

“ The United States Ship Starke !” Ruth cried. “ One 
of our own! ” 

A wild, wanton, incredible phrase ran through her; 
“ the shame of being an American.” And, as she recalled 
it, she saw that Gerry Hull recollected it too ; and the hot 
color on his cheeks deepened and his eyes, when they met 
hers, looked quickly away. 

“They’re wonderful, those fellows,” he admitted to 
her aloud. He spoke, then, not to her, but to the de- 
stroyer. “ But why couldn’t you come three years ago ? ” 

A cry rose simultaneously from a lookout forward upon 
the Ribot and from another man in the top. A periscope 
had appeared ; and the guns at once were going again at 
it. The radio, in the cabin amidships, was snapping a 
warning to the Starke. The Rib of s guns and the splash 
of their shells into the sea gave the direction to Ruth and 
to Gerry Hull ; and they saw, for a flash, a spar moving 
just above the water and hurling a froth before it, trail- 
ing a wake behind. Indeed, it was probably only the froth 
and the wake which they made out at all certainly; but 
that was discernible ; and it moved, not toward them, but 
aslant to them and pointed toward the course of the 
American destroyer as it came up. 

“ They’re trying to get the Starke!” Gerry Hull inter- 
preted this to Ruth. “ The Huns are leaving us for later; 
they know they’ve got to get the Starke or the Starke will 
get their other boat.” 

“ The Starke saw them ! ” Ruth cried, as the guns on 
the destroyer, which had been firing at the fleeing U-boat 


100 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


to the south, tore up the sea where the Ribot’s shells were 
splashing. 

“The torpedo’s started by this time,” Gerry Hull said. 
“Two of ’em, probably, if the Huns had two left.” 

Others about Ruth on the deck of the Ribot realized 
that; and the commander of the Starke recognized it too. 
Ruth saw the leaping form of the destroyer veer suddenly 
and point straight at the spot in the sea where the U-boat 
had thrust up its periscope. This presented the narrow 
beam of the destroyer, instead of its length, for the tor- 
pedo’s target; but still Ruth held breath as on the Starke 
came. 

Gerry Hull had thrust his wrist from his sleeve and, as 
they stood waiting, he glanced down again and again to 
his watch. “Passing — past!” he muttered to himself 
while he counted the time. “ The torpedoes have missed,” 
he announced positively to Ruth at last. 

The commander of the Starke evidently thought so too; 
for the length of his boat began to show again. His guns 
had ceased firing; and the Ribot’s rifles also were silent. 
The destroyer, veering still farther to the right, was dash- 
ing now almost at right angles to its former course. 

“ They’re going to cross the course of the Hun,” Gerry 
Hull explained this also to Ruth, “ and give’em an 4 ash- 
can,’ I suppose — a depth charge, you know,” he added. 

“ I know,” Ruth said. She had read, at least, of the 
tremendous bombs, filled with the new explosive “ T. N. 
T.,” which the U-boat hunters carried and which they 
dropped with fuse fixed to burst far below the surface. 
One of these bombs, in size and shape near enough to 
“ashcans” to win the nickname, was powerful enough — 


ONE OF OUR OWN ” 


101 


she knew — to wreck an undersea craft if the charge burst 
close by. 

The 5 tarke was still leaping on with its length showing 
to the Ribot when two hundred yards or more astern the 
destroyer, a great geyser of water leaped into the air fifty 
— a hundred feet; and while the column of water still 
seemed to mushroom up and up, a tremendous shock 
battered the Ribot. 

Someone shouted out in French while another called in 
English, “Depth charge dropped from the destroyer !” 

“There was one ‘ashcan,’ ” Gerry Hull murmured. 
“ Now for another ! ” 

For the Starke, as soon as the charge had detonated, 
had put her helm about and was circling back with mar- 
velous swiftness to cross again the spot in the sea where 
she had dropped the great bomb. 

Men were below that spot of sea, Ruth knew — German 
men, fifty or eighty or a hundred of them, perhaps. They 
were young men, mostly, not unlike — in their physical 
appearance, at least — German-born boys whom she had 
known at home in Onarga or in Chicago. Some of that 
crew might, conceivably, even be cousins of those boys. 
They had mothers and sisters in homes at Hamburg or 
Dresden or Munich or perhaps in that delightful toy town 
of Nuremberg, which she knew and had loved from pic- 
tures and stories; or some of them came, perhaps, from 
the Black Forest — from those quaint, lovely homely 
woodland cottages which Howard Pyle and Grimm had 
taught her to love when she was a child. They were help- 
less down there below the sea at this moment, perhaps, 
with the seams of their boat opened by that tremendous 


102 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


shock which had battered even the Ribot so far away; 
water might be coming in upon them, suffocating them, 
drowning them there like rats in a trap. The vision 
flowed before Ruth’s eyes for an instant with horror; 
then she saw them, not choking and fighting each other 
for escape which none could find, but crouching safe and 
smiling in their boat, stealing away swiftly and undamaged 
to wait chance to rise again to try another torpedo at the 
Starke or to surprise with gunfire, at the next dawn, 
another vessel like the Ribot and murder more people in 
their beds and fill the space below decks with the dead and 
the agonized dying. 

“ Get ’em ! ” Gerry Hull, close beside her, was praying. 

“ Oh, get ’em now ! Get ’em ! ” 

No reaction to weakness had come to him; years ago, 
he had passed beyond that; and Ruth, at once, had 
recovered. 

“ Get ’em ! ” Aloud, without being conscious of it, she 
echoed his ejaculation; and astern of the Starke, as the 
few minutes before, another great geyser of seawater 
arose; another titanic blow, disseminating through the 
water, beat upon the Ribot. The Starke was turning 
about short, again; but when she rushed back over her 
wake, this time she dropped no other depth charge; she 
slowed a little instead, and circled while she examined 
carefully the surface of the sea. Then suddenly she' 
straightened her course away to the south ; she buried her 
bow in a wave; with the rush of her propellers, foam 
churned at her stern ; she was at full speed after the U-boat 
which she first had engaged and which, during this inter- 
lude, had run quite out of sight to the south or had sunk 


ONE OF OUR OWN” 


103 


or submerged. While she pursued, her radio was report- 
ing to the Ribot; and the Ribot’s rasped in return. 

Oil in convincing quantities had come to the surface 
where the Starke had dropped its charge. Of course, the 
Germans often pumped oil out of their U-boats, when no 
damage had been done, for the purpose of deceiving the 
hunters and making them think they had destroyed a 
U-boat when they had not. But the officers of the Starke 
had been satisfied with their findings; they would follow 
up the other U-boat and then return. They understood 
that only two U-boats had appeared to the Ribot ; if 
another came or if either of the two reappeared, the 
Starke would return instantly. 

No third enemy came; and neither of the others reap- 
peared. In fact, the Starke failed to find any further 
trace of the U-boat which, for a time, had fought upon 
the surface and then run away. Either the gunfire of 
the Ribot or of the Starke had so damaged it that it sud- 
denly sank, leaving no survivors; or — as the men aboard 
the Ribot seemed to think was more likely — the crew 
succeeded in repairing the damage done so that it was able 
to submerge and escape. In this case, it might venture 
another attack, by torpedo, upon the drifting Ribot; so 
the Starke , after abandoning the search, put herself be- 
side the Ribot . An American officer came aboard, bring- 
ing with him a surgeon to aid in care of the Ribot’s 
wounded ; he brought also mechanics to assist the engine 
crew of the Ribot in repairs and he supplied, from his own 
crew, men to take the places of the Ribot’s crew who had 
been killed. 

Ruth watched the young lieutenant — he was few years 


104 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


older than Gerry Hull or herself — as he went about his 
business with the officers of the Ribot. If any shame for 
recreancy of his country had ever stirred him, it had left 
no mark; he was confident and competent — not proud 
but quite sure of himself and of his service. She looked 
for Gerry Hull to see whether he observed this one of 
their people; she looked to see whether Captain For raker 
and “ 1582 ” also saw him. And she found that “ 1582 ” 
was the first to make opportunity to meet the American 
officer and compliment him. 

“ You chaps might have been blowing up U-boats for a 
thousand years ! ” 

The pounding and hammering in the engine rooms was 
resulting in thrust again from the port engine. The Ribot 
started under steam and ran through an area of water all 
iridescent with floating oil. Bits of wood and cloth 
scraps floated in the oil — bits which men scooped up to 
preserve for proof that the depth charges, which the 
Starke had dropped there, had burst and destroyed a 
German submarine. 

Gerry Hull had gone below to look into the hospital 
again. Ruth had offered to aid there but, having no ex- 
perience, she was not accepted. So Hubert Lennon found 
her on deck and went, to the rail with her while they 
watched the recovery of these relics from the sea. It had 
been his first experience, as well as hers, with the fright- 
ful mercilessness of modern battle; he had been made sick 
— a little — by what he had seen. He could not conceal 
it; his sensitive, weak eyes were big; he was very pale; 
his hand was unsteady as he lit a cigarette. 

“ Queer — isn’t it? — queer that they should want to 


ONE OF OUR OWN 


105 


do what they’ve done below and we have no feeling at all 
about them.” He was gazing down at the oil, shimmering 
all colors of the rainbow as the waves flickered it against 
the light. 

“ You’ve none at all ? ” Ruth asked, looking up at him. 

“ I had none at the time we were after them ; but I’m 
afraid,” he confessed with that honesty which Ruth had 
learned to expect from him, “ the idea of them gets to me 
now. Not that I wouldn’t kill them all again! Oh, I’d 
kill! I’ve dreamt sometimes of being surrounded by ’em 
and having a machine gun and mowing Germans down — 
mowing ’em down till there wasn’t one left. But it always 
seemed such an inadequate thing to do. It ought to 
be possible to do more — I don’t mean torture them 
physically, of course; but to make them innocuous 
somehow and let them live and think about what they’ve 
done. There couldn’t be anything more terrible than 
that.” 

“ We’ve succeeded in doing that sometimes,” Ruth said. 
“We’ve taken prisoners even from their U-boats; but 
they don’t seem to be troubled much with remorse. It 
would be different for you and for men like you; but 
that’s because you couldn’t do what they’ve done.” 

“ Sometimes I feel that I could to them. So I guess 
it’s a good thing I’m going to be an ambulance driver. To 
fight them and keep fighting fair and clean yourself — 
well it must take more stuff than I’ve got.” 

Ruth did not know quite what to make of this confes- 
sion. Constantly, since that first day when he called for 
her at the hotel in Chicago, he had been paying his peculiar 
sort of court to her — peculiar, particularly, in, that he 


106 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


never obtruded himself when anyone else offered and he 
never failed to admit anything against himself. 

“ It was fine of you, Hubert/’ she said, “ to come right 
for me when the fight began.” 

“I thought we were sinking; that’s how much sense I 
had,” he returned. “ Gerry, now, knew just what to do.” 

“ He didn’t come for me first, Hubert.” 

“ Maybe not; but you wished he had; I’m glad,” he 
went on quickly before she could rejoin, “that this has 
taught Gerry a few things.” 

It was evident from his manner that he meant 
“things ” in relation to her; and that puzzled her, for she 
could not feel any alteration in Gerry Hull’s manner at 
all. To be sure, she had gone into the sea to try to rescue 
one whom she thought was he; Gerry Hull knew this. 
But that was not the sort of thing which could undo the 
opposition between them. Yet it was plain, upon succeed- 
ing days, that Hubert had discerned a fact; she had 
become again a person of real concern to Gerry Hull. 

She dated the start of that rehabilitation of herself not 
with her adventure in the sea or with the moment when 
he carried her in his arms; but with that instant when 
they stood together watching the U. S. S. Starke come up. 
That rehabilitation proceeded fast the next days when, 
after the Ribot had repaired both engines, the Starke 
brought the ship into a convoy — a fleet of some thirty 
merchant vessels of all sorts and under a dozen flags, 
belligerent and neutral, guarded and directed by a flotilla 
of American destroyers, with the senior American officer 
in command of all the convoy. 

British trawlers joined them soon, adding their protec- 


ONE OF OUR OWN 


107 


tion; two of the destroyers sent up balloons which they 
towed; and now, by day, British and French dirigible 
balloons and British and French and, yes, American sea- 
plane pilots appeared. And no submarine, in those waters 
supposed to be infested with U-boats, once showed a peri- 
scope. By day and night, the patrol and protection of 
those American destroyers proved perfect. So by that 
protection they came at last to France. 

Gerry sought out Ruth upon the last morning when 
they would be on shipboard. It was a smiling, sunny day, 
warm for that time in the year. In addition to the ships 
of the sea and air which recently had accompanied them 
constantly, strange little business-like boats approached, 
airplanes from the land spied upon them; and as they 
drew near to the port, Ruth got amazing sight of the 
multifold activities of even this still distant threshold to 
war. 

“ You’re going to Paris right away ? ” Gerry asked. 

“As soon as I can get through.” 

“ We’ll get a train that’ll probably bring us in at night. 
If you’ve not made arrangements ahead ” 

“I have, thanks; rather Hubert’s offered to see to me; 
besides his aunt gave me letters to cousins of hers who’ve 
been living in Paris for years. They’re Mr. and Mrs. 
Gregory Mayhew; they’ve an apartment on the Avenue 
Kleber. I’m to go there my first night anyway.” 

“That’s good. I’ve heard of the Mayhews; they’ve 
done a lot all during the war. Then can I look you up 
at the Mayhews’ when I’m in Paris? I hope for service 
right away, of course; but Paris is close for our leave 
always.” 


108 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“Oh, I’ll not stay at the Mayhews’ or on Avenue 
Kleber ! I’m to find a room with Milicent Wetherell.” 

“ So you’ll carry out your Latin Quarter plan ! That’s 
better ! But you’ll leave the address, anyway, at the May- 
hews’ ?” 

“Yes,” Ruth promised. 

She took the opportunity to ask him many practical, 
matter-of-fact items which she needed to know — par- 
ticularly about the examinations to be made upon arrival 
in France. 

“ My passport’s almost ruined, you see,” she explained 
to him. 

“ Why ? What’s happened ? ” 

Ruth colored. “I always carried it with me; so it got 
soaked in the sea the other day.” 

Color came to his face too; that had happened when 
she went into the water to get him, of course. She would 
not have reminded him of it but that she knew she well 
might need help no less influential than his to pass the 
gateway to France. 

“Of course,” he said. “How’s it spoiled?” 

“ My picture on it, mostly.” 

“Oh; that’ll be all right! You’ll just have to have 
another picture taken in France and have them paste it 
on. I’ll tell ’em about it and see you through, of course.” 

Accordingly Ruth went to her cabin and, after bolting 
the door against even Milicent Wetherell, she got out her 
passport which really had been wet by the sea but not 
soaked so badly that the picture was useless. Indeed, the 
picture was still plain enough so that a French intelligence 
officer might make out that it was not Ruth. So she 


“ ONE OF OUR OWN 


109 


soaked it again in water until that danger was past ; then 
she dried it and took it with her to present at the port. 

“ I’ve told Agnes Ertyle all about your passport,” Gerry 
Hull said to her when she came on deck again, “ so she’ll 
help you out if they put the women through first. They 
have to be awfully careful in France these days about 
spies, you see— especially now — spies from America.” 


CHAPTER VIII 


FRANCE 

F EAR — so Ruth was finding out — is a most com- 
plicated and perplexing sensation. What she had 
learned about fear, upon those infrequent occasions when 
causes of alarm approached that queer, humdrum, almost 
forgotten girl who used to work for Sam Hilton, had 
made it appear a simple emotion to bring about a rational 
reaction. One fear differed from another chiefly in de- 
grees of effect; you might be a little afraid of something 
— like having your skirt caught in an elevator door when 
the car started up too crowded; having a rough looking 
man suddenly accost you when you were hurrying back 
to Ontario Street late in a winter evening, caused more 
alarm; and there were other occurrences which had 
frightened still more. The amount of fear you felt — 
and the force of the corresponding reaction — seemed 
generally proportional to the danger threatening you ; but 
now Ruth had been through an adventure — battle — 
which had menaced her life to a far greater degree than 
any previous experience; and she had not been afraid, in 
the old sense of fear. Emotions had tortured her — emo- 
tions far more violent and furious than ever she had 
suffered; but fear for her life had not been chief among 
them. Committed to battle, as she had been by the mere 
fact of her presence aboard the Ribot, the instant realiza- 

IIO 


FRANCE 


111 


tion that nothing she could do could save her had amaz- 
ingly freed her from fear. 

Fear, then, was not made up just of a dread of death. 
Now that the Ribot was safely in from the Bay of Biscay, 
had passed the Phare de Cordouan and was running down , 
the broad, flat estuary of the Gironde river to Bordeaux, 
securely situated sixty long miles inland, Ruth was in no 
danger of death at all. If at that city, whose roofs and 
chimneys were just coming into sight, the French exam- 
iners found out how she had obtained her passport, how 
she had duped and tricked people to aid her in arriving 
here, and if they arrested her, therefore, upon the charge 
of being a German spy, they would be making her life safe ; 
her punishment probably would not go beyond imprison- 
ment for the duration of the war ; it would prevent her wild 
plan of going into Germany, where court-martials did not 
simply imprison spies. Yet Ruth was afraid this morning 
as she had never been before; far, far more afraid than 
when she had been in battle. 

That meant, obviously, that she was far more afraid 
of failing to do that which she was determined upon than 
she was afraid of dying. Less than three weeks earlier, 
when Ruth Alden was drawing up quit-claims and deeds 
for Sam Hilton in Chicago, such a recognition of the fact 
in regard to oneself would have seemed — even if spoken 
only to self — ostentatious and theatrical ; but now to make 
the fate of yourself nothing, the performing of your part 
in the great scheme everything, was the simple and 
accepted code of almost everyone about her. 

Exactly when Ruth had begun to accept this code for 
herself, she did not know. Once or twice in her twenty-two 


112 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


years she had encountered emergencies when one person or 
two — or very, very few, at most — acted without regard 
to consequence to themselves ; but always they did this for 
the saving of more serious catastrophe to a greater num- 
ber of persons who were present ; so that even upon those 
occasions the highest purpose was plain self-preservation. 
But now Ruth had become a member of a society not 
chiefly charged with preserving itself — whose spirit, 
indeed, was disregard of self. She had come from a 
society in which the discovery that a certain project was 
not “ safe ” and would lead one to certain destruction was 
enough to immediately end that project, into a hemisphere 
where the certainty of death made no difference and was 
simply not to be discussed. 

It was not from fear of punishment, therefore, that 
Ruth’s heart was fluttering as the Ribot drew up to the 
docks at Bordeaux ; it was from terror at thought of no 
longer being permitted to be one of such a company 
as that upon this ship. 

Men were directing the passengers to arrange them- 
selves for presentation of their credentials to the French 
authorities ; and Ruth found Lady Agnes taking her place 
beside her. The English girl was well known and, after 
merely formal inquiry and the signing of a few papers, 
she was passed on. She made a statement for Ruth of the 
reasons for Ruth’s passport being in bad condition; and 
she mentioned what she knew about Ruth. The French- 
men attended politely, but they did not, therefore, take 
chances. They examined her passport far more carefully 
than they had Agnes Ertyle’s; but Ruth had so ruined the 
picture that identification by it was impossible. The sea 


FRANCE 


113 


water also had helped to blur the signature so that her 
'‘Cynthia Gail” which they made her sign, and which 
they compared with the name upon the passport, escaped 
open challenge. Then there were questions. 

The man who asked them referred to cards in an index 
box which, evidently, had come across upon the Ribot; 
for his inquiries referred largely to questions which had 
been asked Ruth upon the other side. She, fortunately, 
had had sense enough to have written down for herself 
the answers which she had given at New York; she had 
rehearsed them again and again ; so now she did not fail 
to give similar replies. Then there were other inquiries — 
sudden, startling ones, which gave her consternation ; for 
they seemed based upon some knowledge of the real 
Cynthia Gail which Ruth did not have. But she had to 
answer ; so she did so as steadily as possible and as intel- 
ligently as she could. 

The examiner gazed more keenly at her now ; he halted 
his examination to confer in whispers with an associate; 
he made careful notation upon a card. A clerk brought 
in a cablegram, which the examiner carefully read. Had 
the body of Cynthia Gail been identified in Chicago? 
Had her family found out the fraud which Ruth had been 
playing upon them ; or had other discovery been made so 
that the French knew that she was an impostor? 

The man looked up from the cablegram. 

“ You have been in France before ? ” he challenged. 

Ruth had thought of being asked that question. She 
had told Gerry Hull at Mrs. Corliss’ that she had been in 
France — or at least she had let him suppose so when 
he said that, of course, she had been in Paris. She did 


114 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


not know at all whether Cynthia Gail had or not ; but that 
statement to Gerry Hull — which he might have repeated 
— committed her. 

“ Not since the war began,” she answered. 

“ Previous to then?” 

“Yes.” 

“ Upon how many occasions ? ” 

“ Once,” Ruth said. 

“ When was that ? ” 

Ruth had figured out several occasions when Cynthia 
Gail might have come abroad — if she really ever had 
done so. “The summer of 1913.” 

“When did you land?” 

“ Late in June ; I don’t recall the exact date.” She fixed 
June, as she supposed Cynthia Gail would have come dur- 
ing summer vacation. 

“ Where did you land ? ” 

“ Dieppe. I crossed from New York on the Adriatic of 
the White Star Line to Plymouth for England first ; then 
I crossed to France by Newhaven-Dieppe.” She had 
picked up a good deal on board the Ribot, you see. 

“ Visiting what places in France ? ” 

“I spent most of my time in Paris; I was with my 
parents. We stayed at the Hotel Regina.” Gerry Hull 
had said he supposed she had been at the Regina or the 
Continental. 

The readiness of these answers seemed to somewhat 
reassure the examiner. 

“You have friends in France?” 

“Only acquaintances such as one makes traveling; no 
one whom I could now place. I’ve letters to Mr. and Mrs. 


FRANCE 


115 


Gregory Mayhew, of Avenue Kleber. I did not know 
them when I was in France before.” 

The examiner made notations on his card. 

“ Report at your first opportunity, if you please, to your 
consul general at Paris and obtain a passport in place of 
this ! ” He was writing upon her passport now and hand- 
ing it back to her ! Whatever reservation of judgment he 
had made in regard to her ; whatever orders he might give 
to watch her pending verification of her facts, he was 
passing her on and permitting her to go with the others 
to take the afternoon train to Paris ! 

She saw to customs and let Hubert order the transfer 
of her luggage; then she was free upon the streets of her 
first foreign city. Not for long; because the train for 
Paris left soon. But Hubert hired a queer old cab, driven 
by a white-haired, Gallicly garrulous man, who quickly 
understood that they were less interested in the wide mag- 
nificence of the modern city than in the labyrinths of the 
old town with its white, huddled houses facing quaint, 
gayly painted shops about irregular squares, and looming 
at one another over the narrowest of mediaeval streets. 

They halted the cab and walked down the delightful 
defiles. Ruth had to remember, in her raptures, that she 
was supposed to have been in France before; but there 
were moments when Hubert left her — he understood that 
she wanted to experience some of this alone — when the 
incredible wonder that she was abroad overwhelmed her. 
She had cabled, of course, to Cynthia Gail’s parents in 
Decatur ; but she wanted to cable her own mother to tell 
her where she was, and to buy the pretty, picturesque 
postal cards, and send them to her sisters ; she wanted to 


116 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


write some of the wonder to all her friends; she would 
have included even a card to Sam Hilton. But all that 
was impossible. 

Then the sight of French soldiers on the narrow streets 
and the many, many French women in mourning — 
mothers and widows — returned her to the grim, terrible 
business which had brought her here. She rejoined 
Hubert where he had been waiting for her at the end of 
a twisty, shadowy little street; he had bought a French 
newspaper; and when she came beside him, he glanced up 
at her gravely. 

“They’ve sunk a transport with American troops, 
Cynthia,” he said. 

“Where? How many of our soldiers — ?” she cried. 

“The Tuscanid to the north of Ireland; torpedoed 
when we were at sea. Two or three hundred of our men 
are missing; they don’t know exactly how many yet.” 

The news had reached the others of the Rib of s pas- 
sengers, who were taking the same train for Paris that 
afternoon. Ruth shared a compartment in the little 
European-gauged cars, with Milicent Wetherell and two 
French women; but the train was a “corridor train,” as 
Ruth learned to say, and the occupants of the different 
compartments could visit one another much as they might 
in the larger American cars. There was news of recent 
air raids upon Paris — one raid had been most deadly 
and destructive; there was news of various sorts 
from the French and British fronts — a little news also 
from the short American sectors; for it was announced 
that the Americans had taken over a new portion of the 
line in Lorraine. But the report of the successful attack 


FRANCE 


117 


of the U-boats upon the Tuscania overshadowed all other 
news. 

It was not alone the loss of the hundreds of American 
soldiers ; it was the ugly threat that, where the U-boats at 
last had succeeded in sinking a transport out of a convoy, 
they might succeed again and, as the Germans had 
been boasting, they might — they just possibly might cut 
that bridge of ships really beginning this month to bring 
America over the seas. Ruth thrilled with discovery at 
how these people here in France had come to count upon 
the arrival of her people. She talked not only with the 
acquaintances from the Ribot, but Milicent and she prac- 
ticed their French upon the polite and patient ladies from 
Bordeaux. 

Ruth thus found that these French women were relieved 
that the Tuscania was not an American ship and had not 
been under convoy of American destroyers when it was 
lost. 

‘‘They have the most appalling faith in us!” Ruth 
reported this to Gerry when he stopped to speak with her 
during the afternoon. “ They think we can do anything; 
that we cannot fail ! ” 

“ That’s their way,” he warned. “ We’re the new ally. 
The British must have done wonders to get off all but 
two hundred men from a crowded transport going down 
in a heavy sea.” 

“ I don’t mean that we could have done more,” Ruth 
said, “or that we could have saved the Tuscania; I’m 
just glad people can believe so in us. But it puts upon us 
an awful responsibility to make good.” 

“ It does,” Gerry agreed, laconically, and went on. 


113 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


The train pulled into Poitiers — Poitiers of the battle 
of the Black Prince in her Green's English History! It 
ran on to Tours ! Now the names of even the little towns, 
as they neared Paris, were familiarly full of legend and 
romance. 

Hubert Lennon “ looked by ” in the evening, as he often 
had during the day; and, as Milicent was visiting else- 
where just then, he sat down beside Ruth. 

She observed at once that something was troubling him 

— not a matter which had affected him suddenly, but 
rather an uncertainty which seemed to have been pro- 
gressing for some time. He remained beside her silent 
for several minutes while they looked out at the lights of 
the little French hamlets. Finally he asked her in quite 
an ordinary tone, so that the French women could not 
suspect any challenge: 

“ You remember motoring down this way to Blois and 
Tours, and then that run down the valley of the Loire ?” 

Ruth startled a little straighter and gazed out at the 
darkness without answering. If Gerry Hull had asked 
her such a question she would have bluffed the answer 
boldly; but Hubert had interrogated her for a purpose; 
and he knew something of what Cynthia Gail had done 
and had not done. Suddenly it dawned upon Ruth that 
that time, nine years earlier, when Hubert had last seen 
Cynthia Gail, was not in Chicago, as she had supposed, 
but here in France. 

“Yes, I remember,” she replied weakly and without 
looking about. 

“ Your father and mother were with you, and my father 

— he was alive then — and I; and who else was along?” 


FRANCE 


119 


he questioned, as though quite casually, but Ruth knew 
that this was a test. 

“I — ’ don’t remember,” she faltered. She doubted 
whether Cynthia Gail had been with him on any such 
trip; the whole question might merely be a catch; 
well, if he suspected her and wanted to catch her, cer- 
tainly he had her. Her progress from the moment of her 
appearance as Cynthia Gail had been made possible — she 
recognized — because of his unsuspecting acceptance of 
her. That had won for her championship in more power- 
ful quarters which, in turn, had gained her favor more 
influential still ; yet the whole pyramid of that favor bal- 
anced on the point of Hubert’s original acceptance. 

So she sat in the dark awaiting what this strange friend 
of hers should determine to do. 

The French women in the opposite seats conversed 
between themselves. The train was drawing into Paris, 
they said. The rapid rattle of railroad joints and cross- 
tracks confirmed this to Ruth, as well as the more frequent 
noise of engines passing; she could see, too, low shaded 
signal lights. But the environs of Paris had become more 
black than the villages of the south; this was from danger 
of repetition of the severe air raids of which Ruth had 
heard at Bordeaux. 

The train stopped ; not at a station, nor did guards open 
the doors. Everything was black without ; the few lights, 
which Ruth had been viewing, either had not been neces- 
sary thereabouts, or else they had been extinguished ; and, 
with the stilling of the train noise, a weird, wailing moan 
rose through the night air. 

“A siren ! ” Hubert said to Ruth. The French women, 


120 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


too, had recognized the warning of a raid. A blast of a 
horn blew a loud staccato alerte; and the siren — it evi- 
dently was on some fast-driven car — diminished in the 
distance, wailing. Far off, but approaching closer, 
sounded deep, rolling reverberations; not like guns — 
Ruth knew guns now; nor yet like shells such as had 
burst on board the Ribot. They were aerial torpedoes, of 
tremendous violence, detonating in Paris buildings or upon 
the city streets. Guns were going now; and their shells 
were smashing high in the air. 

Ruth could see the flash of their break against the 
gleaming stars of the clear, cold sky; she could see rockets 
and glaring flares. The sound of the guns and the smash 
of the shells in the sky redoubled; a mighty flash lit the 
ground a half mile or more away across the railroad 
yards ; it threw in brilliant silhouette for a second, roofs, 
trees, chimneys against a crimson inferno of flame. 

Hubert had the window open; and Ruth and the French 
women were kneeling side by side to look out and up. 
They could see little lights in the sky now; they could 
hear, between the smash of, shells, the hum of airplane 
motors and the rattle of brief bursts of machine-gun fire. 

Airplanes of defense were up there fighting the Ger- 
mans — French piloted those machines. But there might 
be Americans fighting there, too. Ruth had read that 
once or twice American pilots had been among those hon- 
ored with the defense of Paris. She did not know whether 
it was true ; she had meant to ask Gerry Hull. 

A few yards away in another compartment of another 
car — probably in the compartment where Lady Agnes 
sat — Ruth knew that he was kneeling before a window 


FRANCE 


121 


also gazing out; and she knew that the helpless impulse 
which stirred her with desire to be out there above to fly 
and fight was surging through him a thousand times 
intensified. She could feel even Hubert Lennon twist and 
sway at struggle with that impulse ; how much more was 
Gerry Hull’s lithe, powerful body — that strong, rhyth- 
mically moving form which had carried her — straining 
now to join his comrades there above and to strike. 

A flare of flame, not sharp and jagged like the burst of 
shells, nor yet the streak of a rocket, nor like the glaring 
spot of a signal light, wavered across the stars. Some- 
thing clouded it — smoke. It flung free from the smoke 
and dived, flaring bigger and brighter, trailing behind it a 
streamer of black which blanketed both rockets beyond 
and the stars ; it dived on, burning. 

Ruth’s heart throbbed like a hammer in her throat. 
“Chute d’un aeroplane !” the French women cried. 

“ Fall of an airplane ! ” 

It had been hit ! The gasoline tank had ignited ; it was 
going down in flames. Whether friend or foe, no one on 
the train could know. Cries reached Ruth from other 
compartments in the car. Everyone was seeing it as it 
dropped down now faster and faster, its head burning 
whiter; its streamer of smoke longer and broader before 
the stars. The line of roofs and chimneys off to the 
south, which had shown in glaring silhouette, sucked it 
from sight. It had crashed; and a shudder shocked 
through Ruth as she pictured the pilot. She wanted 
Gerry Hull beside her to know that he was safe; her 
hand groped in the dark, without her will. It encountered 
Hubert’s and found his trembling and cold. 


122 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“They’re going away, I think,” he said to reassure 
her. 

The detonations of the torpedoes dropped upon the city 
surely were less ; the guns diminished their fire ; the flashes 
in the sky were farther away; and the hum of the airplane 
motors and the bursts of machine-gun fire no longer were 
to be heard. 

A bugle from somewhere blew a none-too-confident 
“All clear.” The train moved on and drew after mid- 
night into the darkened Gare du Ouai-d’Orsay. 

It composed for Ruth a far different entrance to Paris 
than any she had dreamed — the dark, almost deserted 
railroad station as a center of an expanse vague and doubt- 
ful under the starlit city haze. A man who repeated, 
“ Mees Seenthya Gaiil ” and “ Meester Huber’ Lenwow,” 
in patient, respectful intoning, stood at the gates from the 
train. He had a car, toward which he escorted Ruth and 
Milicent (who, Ruth insisted, must not try to find a place 
for herself that night) and Hubert. 

Several of the Rib of s men came and said good-bye to 
Ruth and Milicent again and made last memoranda of how 
they could later be located. Gerry Hull appeared and, in 
her brief moment with him, Ruth marveled at the change 
in him. The air raid and the view of his comrades fight- 
ing again and, too, this nearness of his return to duty 
had banished all boyishness from him; a simple stern- 
ness suddenly had returned him to a maturity which made 
her wonder how she ever could have assumed to scold 
and correct him as once she had. 

He saw that Ruth and Milicent passed the formalities 
at the gare. He ascertained that they had a vehicle ; he 


FRANCE 


123 


brought to Ruth Lady Agnes’ farewell and offer of assist- 
ance at any time. Then, saluting, he said good-bye and 
they drove off. 

Their car was keeping along the Quai-d’Orsay at first 
with the Seine glinting below on the right. They passed a 
bridge. 

“ Pont de Solferino,” Hubert said. 

They turned across the next bridge — “ Pont de la Con- 
corde!” 

That brought to Ruth’s right the Garden of the 
Tuileries! They were in the Place de la Concorde; they 
turned into the Champs-Elysees ! It was little more than 
a vague wideness of speeding shadows; but Ruth’s blood 
was warm and racing. Hubert spoke to her, and when 
she replied she knew that if he had questioned before 
whether she had been previously in Paris he could not 
wonder now. But he spoke to her as if she had, calling 
names of the places quietly to Milicent rather than to her. 

The car swerved into the Place de l’Etoile. 

“The Arc-de-Triomphe!” Hubert cried. Ruth bent 
and saw its looming bulk; they were upon the Avenue 
Kleber now and the car soon was halting. 

A single light burned in the hallway of a building of 
apartments handsomer than any Ruth ever had seen; a 
door upon a second floor opened and an American man 
and woman welcomed “ Cynthia Gail ” as Ruth had never 
been welcomed anywhere in her life. These hospitable 
people — they were Aunt Emilie’s cousins, the Mayhews 

— welcomed Hubert, too, of course, and Milicent. 

Ruth lay that night in a beautiful bed of gold and blue 

— the most grateful, the most excited, the most humble 


124 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


and insignificant-feeling girl in all France. When she had 
started out upon this adventure in America she had seemed 
to herself to be seizing an opportunity ordained for her 
by fate and entrusted to her as the instrument for a great 
deed ; now the fact that she was here, and had come with 
an idea that she could greatly do, seemed the most assum- 
ing conceit in the world. 

The next morning when she went out upon the avenues 
in the uniform, which now she was to wear constantly, the 
pettiness of her part reimpressed itself with every square 
she passed as she witnessed the throngs of soldiers — of 
a dozen races, of innumerable nations — gathered for the 
war. She went with Hubert to the American consulate, 
where she applied for a new passport to replace the ruined 
one; then, proceeding alone to the office where Cynthia 
Gail was to report, she accepted gladly the simple, routine 
duties assigned her. 

That same day she and Milicent found a room in a 
pension upon the Rue des Saints Peres, where Hubert and 
Mrs. Mayhew called upon her the next evening. But if 
Gerry Hull had inquired for her at the Mayhew’s, his 
inquiry resulted in no visit to the Rue des Saints Peres. 
Lieutenant Gerry Hull was transferred — so Ruth read in 
a Matin of the next week — to the American forces and 
was flying now under his own flag. And with his return 
to duty it seemed that he must have lost concern for a girl 
satisfied to do half-clerical, half-charity relief work among 
refugees in Paris. 

Of course Ruth did not think of herself as merely doing 
such work; she considered herself as waiting for further 
instructions from the Germans. 


FRANCE 


125 


The orders which she had received from the spy in 
Chicago had directed her to take up this work of Cynthia 
Gail’s ; and only by following these orders could she hope 
to carry out her plan. 

She found far more talk of German agents, and far 
more certainty of their activities, in Paris than she had 
heard about in Chicago. The difference was that while 
in Chicago the presence and the activities of German spies 
was extraordinary, here it was the everpresent and 
accepted thing — like the arrival of trains of wounded 
from the front and air raids upon clear nights. She 
learned that the Germans undertook no important enter- 
prise without information from their agents in France; 
she learned that, as in America, these agents were con- 
stantly being taken. It was plain to her, therefore, that 
they could scarcely have any rigid organization or any 
routine method of reports or intercommunication. They 
must operate by creating or seizing sudden opportunities. 

During the noon hour upon a day in the middle of 
February, Ruth left the relief rooms, where she had 
been working, to wander in the winter sunlight by 
Notre Dame, where bells were ringing for some special 
mass. She went in and stood in the nave, listening to the 
chants, when she observed a gentleman of about fifty, evi- 
dently a Parisian, go to a pew beyond her and kneel down. 
She noticed him because she had seen him at least twice 
before when she was coming out of her office, and he 
had observed her with keener glance than gentlemen of his 
apparent station were accustomed to bestow. 

She went from the cathedral after a few minutes and 
wandered up the Rue St. Jacques toward the Sorbonne, 


126 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


when the same man suddenly appeared about a corner and 
— a rather gusty wind was blowing — his hat left his 
head and blew toward Ruth. She stooped quickly and 
picked it up. 

He thanked her effusively in French and, observing that 
she was an American in uniform, he extended compliments 
upon the participation of America, which made it impos- 
sible for Ruth to go on at once. Suddenly, and without 
change in his tone, he inquired her name. 

“ Cynthia Gail,” she gave it, without thinking anything 
in particular. 

“ From what city ? ” he inquired. 

“ Decatur, Illinois.” 

“ You are to make effort at once to leave Paris to go to 
the district of Roisel. Never mind the Americans; there 
will be few there. Observe British dispositions; of their 
Fifth Army; their headquarters; what forces in reserve 
present; what movements indicating a lengthening of 
their front. Return here after two weeks; not later than 
three. It is the wonder of America, observe!” he pro- 
ceeded in the same tone as a man went by, “ that it saves 
not only my country, my civilization, but even, for me, my 
hat! I thank you again, Mademoiselle. Bon jour!” He 
bowed and was off. 


CHAPTER IX 


TO PICARDY 

R UTH stood galvanized for a second. The man, 
beyond doubt, was a German agent; he had ad- 
dressed her as a spy. There was no other possible 
explanation. 

When the woman at Mrs. Corliss' had disclosed herself 
as an enemy, Ruth had balanced the harm the woman 
might do to America against the harm she, herself, might 
do Germany, and Ruth had decided, rightly or wrongly, to 
remain quiet. Now she could not do so. A German spy 
in Chicago was a distant, only indirectly dangerous per- 
son ; a spy in Paris did most direct things — such as set- 
ting colored lights at the bottoms of chimneys to guide the 
great black-crossed Gothas which bombed Paris by night, 
blowing down those buildings in the ruins of which Ruth 
had seen men frantically digging by the early morning 
light; they did things such as ... . Ruth did not 

delay to catalog in that flash the acts of Germans in Paris. 
She knew that man must be arrested at whatever cost to 
herself. 

She started after him down the Rue St. Jacques in the 
first spur of this impulse. Fortunately, after leaving her, 
he did not gaze back, but proceeded alertly along the street. 
A man and a woman spoke to him ; he bowed. Another 
passerby bowed to him with the deference shown a gentle- 
127 


128 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


man of importance and position. And Ruth slowed her 
pursuit and followed a little distance behind him. He 
turned to the Boulevard St. Michel, where others bowed 
to him, crossed the boulevard and went into the Ecole de 
Medecine. 

Ruth halted a man who had spoken to him and inquired, 
please, the name of the gentleman who had just passed. 
The Frenchman informed politely, “Monsieur de 
Trevenac.” 

“ The entire name, please ? ” Ruth pressed. 

“ Monsieur Louis de Trevenac/’ the name was repeated 
as of one well known. Ruth proceeded to the door of the 
Ecole de Medecine, where inquiry confirmed the name; 
M. de Trevenac had just entered. 

Ruth abandoned the pursuit. She was shaking with 
excitement under her trim, khaki uniform and cape; but 
coolness had come to her — coolness and that calm, com- 
petent thought which always succeeded the irresponsible 
impulse with her. The German agent, M. Louis de 
Trevenac, was not trying to escape from Paris; his busi- 
ness, undoubtedly, was to remain here, and not in hiding, 
but prominent and well known. If she accused him to a 
gendarme the alarm would go at once to his confederates ; 
it would be the stupidest and clumsiest action she could 
take. Now that she knew him, she could move most 
effectively by indirection; she need not betray herself at 
all, either to the French or to the Germans. 

She returned across the Seine and went to her work 
while she thought it out. She could accomplish her pur- 
pose partly, perhaps, through Hubert Lennon. She might 
accomplish it more safely through the aid of other men 


TO PICARDY 


129 


whom she now knew ; or through Mr. Mayhew. But she 
could accomplish it best through Gerry Hull. 

Accordingly she telephoned to Hubert that afternoon 
to meet her at the pension as soon as possible ; and when 
he came, she asked him if he knew where Gerry Hull 
was. 

He was in Paris, Hubert had to confess; he had been 
in Paris for two days. 

Ruth could not help coloring. “I need to see him, 
Hubert. Tell me where I can find him and I shall go 
there.” 

“ I’ll see that he comes here,” Hubert offered, a little 
belligerently. 

“ Perhaps that is better,” Ruth accepted. Her orders 
from the Germans had been to cultivate her acquaintance 
with Gerry Hull; yet, if they were watching her now, it 
was better to have them see him come to her. “ But you 
must get him at once,” she said. 

Hubert succeeded within the hour, for it was not yet 
five in the afternoon when Gerry Hull appeared on the 
Rue des Saints Peres, found the little pension and 
rang. Ruth had him ushered into a small private parlor, 
where she and Milicent entertained; she saw him there 
alone. 

He did not pretend that he had been about to call upon 
her when she summoned him; nor did he apologize for 
not having called before. He was glad to see her, particu- 
larly when it became plain that she had sent for him for 
help in an emergency. 

“ I have received information, which I am quite sure is 
reliable,” she said to him after she had closed the door and 


130 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


they sat down, “but which I wish to have used anony- 
mously, if it is at all possible. ,, 

“Information against someone ?” he asked. 

“Against a man who goes by the name of Louis de 
Trevenac, ,, she said in a low voice. The placards all about 
Paris warning, Be on guard! Enemy ears listen! in- 
fluenced her even behind the closed doors. 

Gerry Hull started. Not greatly, for he had been in 
France long enough to hear accusations — false or true — 
against almost anyone. 

“You know him?” Ruth asked. 

“ He is well known,” Gerry said. “ I’ve heard of him.” 

“ I am absolutely certain that he is a German spy.” 

“ How do you know ? ” 

“ If I wanted to tell how I know, I would not have sent 
for you. It was not easy,” Ruth said with a gentle sweet- 
ness which caught him with a flush. “ I thought it was 
possible that you would know a method of starting inquiry 
regarding one without having to give details of the cause 
of your suspicion.” 

Gerry nodded. “That’s possible.” 

“Then please do that in regard to M. Louis de 
Trevenac. At once!” 

He regarded her, conscious of having to make an effort 
to consider what she asked without feeling for her. The 
attraction to her which instantly had given him curiosity 
about her that first time they met — attraction not merely 
to her warm, glowing vitality, but to the purpose which 
imbued her and to the challenge of her eager, honest mind 
— was swaying him. He got for a moment, and quite 
without his will, the feeling of her lithe, round little form 


TO PICARDY 


131 


warm against him, though she was drenched by the sea, 
that time he carried her. He banished that deliberately 
by recalling the offense she had given him of the criticism, 
as he had taken it and as he still took it, of his comrades, 
and of himself, and of the great beliefs for which and in 
which he lived. 

He could not possibly question the whole loyalty of this 
girl ; he was not even considering that as he gazed at her. 
He really was watching the pretty, alluring, all uncon- 
scious pulsations of color in the clear, soft skin of her 
cheek and temple; he was watching the blue of her eyes 
under her brown brows; watching the tiny tremblings of 
her slender, well-shaped hands; and — as Sam Hilton 
used to do — he was watching the hues of light glint in 
her hair as she moved her head. 

“ I can try that, Miss Gail,” he said at last. “ If there’s 
nothing found out, there will be no particular concern for 
the source of suspicion; but if what you say’s true, I may 
have to ask you a good deal more.” 

He left it thus when he went away a little later; for, 
though he would have liked to stay, she did not wish him 
to, insisting that he must proceed against Louis de 
Trevenac at once. 

He did so ; with results which brought him back to her 
at the end of the second day. 

“What else do you know in connection with De 
Trevenac?” he demanded of her as soon as they were 
alone. 

“ You’re satisfied that he’s a spy ? ” 

“ The French found,” Gerry said, “ a most astonishing 
lot of things. They’ve mopped up about twenty more 


132 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


besides De Trevenac — twenty they’d never even looked 
into. How did you know about him ? ” 

The discoveries had brought Gerry to her almost in 
awe ; and there surged through her an impulse to tell him 
how she knew and all about herself — to end to him and 
with him the long, every-waking-minute, every-sleeping- 
minute strain of being an impostor, of facing exposure, of 
playing a part. She had not let herself feel how that 
strain pulled upon her, how lonely and frightened she was 
at times, how ill it made her — sick physically as well as 
sick at heart — to write her cheerful, newsy letters to 
Cynthia Gail’s parents, and to read the letters written by 
mother and father to Cynthia, and to which she must 
again reply; to write to the little boy in Decatur as his 
sister would write; to write also — and in ways this was 
the hardest— to the man who had loved Cynthia Gail and 
who, believing that Cynthia was alive and she was 
Cynthia, was pouring out his love to her in letters to 
which also she must reply and either make him think that 
the girl whom he loved, and who had loved him, still lived, 
and would not forgive him a single hasty word, or else 
that she lived, and still loved him, and would be his in 
his arms again. 

For a moment the impulse almost overmastered Ruth; 
but then she had the better of it. If she told even this 
man who might trust her — might, but how could she be 
sure? — she put the direction of her fate in other hands. 
If she had told him about herself at Mrs. Corliss’ or upon 
the boat, he would have prevented her from proceeding 
alone as she had; he would have believed her unable to 
best accomplish things by herself, or he would have 


TO PICARDY 


133 


thought the risk too great; or some obstacle would have 
arisen to prevent her doing that not inconsiderable thing 
she already had done. 

If she was willing to give up now — to relieve herself 
of further risk and become merely what she seemed, an 
ordinary girl worker, in France — why she could tell him. 
But if she was to go ahead into the greater hazards of 
which she dreamed, she must go of herself. 

“I could tell you,” Ruth said, gazing up at Gerry, 
“ that when I was on the street I happened to overhear a 
conversation which made me sure that he was a spy.” 

“ But it would not be the truth.” 

“No; not quite.” 

“I knew so.” ' 

She looked down and he saw her suddenly shiver. He 
put a hand quickly upon her and then the other hand; 
he held her by her slender shoulders, her round arms 
quivering under his fingers. His pulses leaped with 
warm, thrusting waves which seemed to start in his hands 
holding her and to shake his whole body. 

“What is it?” he asked. 

She raised a hand and gently with her fingers, released 
one hand of his from her shoulder; he removed the 
other. 

“ What have we done with De Trevenac and the rest? ” 

“They’re in a safe place for further investigation; 
nothing else, yet.” 

“ But we’re going to ? ” 

“Give ’em a trial, of course; and then shoot some of 
’em anyway.” 

“Monsieur de Trevenac?” 


134 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“Him pretty surely.” 

A shudder jerked her shoulders together in a spasm; 
he wanted to still her under his hands; but he did not. 
He knew why she asked particularly about De Trevenac; 
she had seen him, heard his voice, perhaps; she could 
picture him standing blindfolded to be shot — upon her 
information. He would be her first slain. 

Gerry had been a bit more brutal in his way of telling 
her than he had intended ; indeed, now he did not under- 
stand himself. He had acted upon instinct to torment, 
rather than spare her, to see how she took it. 

She raised her head proudly. She’s beautiful, he 
thought. The poise of that well-shaped head always was 
pretty ; her shoulders, even under the khaki, were pretty ; 
they were well-formed, firm shoulders. His gaze had 
dropped to them from her eyes; but now went back to 
her blue eyes again. 

“ Did you ever see — before — a man you had to kill ? ” 
she asked. 

“A few times,” he said. 

“ The first man you killed ? ” 

“The first man I ever was certain that I killed was 
when I was in the foreign legion,” he said. “ We were 
advancing, using bayonets. The Huns weren’t expecting 
an offensive there ; it was the first year after they’d failed 
in France and were using their best troops in Russia. We 
found a Landsturm regiment against us — middle-aged 
men, married mostly, I suppose ; fathers. I saw the face 
of one a second or so before I put my bayonet through 
him. A couple of times since, maneuvering for position 
in the air, I’ve got a good glimpse at chaps I was lucky 


TO PICARDY 


135 


enough to shoot down afterwards. I’d rather have not, 
you know,” he confessed. 

“ I know,” Ruth said. “ But we’re going to kill them 
— kill men, men, and more men! We have to. I’ll not 
be too soft, don’t fear! I’ve been all this month among 
women — girls and children, too — from the departments 
they’ve overrun ! Not that they’ve told me much which I 
didn’t believe before; but — well, getting it direct is 
different.” 

“Yes.” 

He was thinking, she knew, of their initial encounter; 
was she so pleased and proud of the tardiness of America 
now? 

“ I found out a remarkable thing from some Belgians,” 
she said, half in answer to this unspoken challenge. 
“ They told me that after the Germans took complete pos- 
session of their country and forbade them to wear Belgian 
colors or even rosette symbols, they took to wearing 
American colors. We were neutral then; and the Ger- 
mans didn’t dare stop it ; so they all wore, as their symbol 
of defiance, our flag ! ” 

“That was when everyone thought always that we 
must come in,” he rejoined. He was not thinking about 
what she was saying, but of her. “ You’ve had more in 
your mind all along than just coming here to do relief 
work,” he announced his thought aloud to her. 

“Yes, I had.” 

“ Can I ask what it is ? ” 

“ I can’t tell you.” 

“But you’ve been doing some of it?” 

“Some.” 


136 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“You’re going to keep at it?” 

“If you’ll let me.” 

“You mean by not making you tell how you found out 
about De Trevenac and by keeping you out of that ? ” 

She nodded. 

“ But you must tell me anything else of that sort you 
know.” 

“ I don’t know anything more of that sort except this : 
he had orders to see that someone be sent to the vicinity 
of Roisel to observe particularly dispositions of the 
British Fifth Army — their reserve strength and whether 
there were signs that they will extend their front.” 

“That’s absolutely all?” 

“Absolutely all — except that I think that was a par- 
ticularly imperative order.” 

“ They’d be sending people all along that front,” Gerry 
said. “We know they’re to try an offensive where the 
armies join; the only doubt is when. I say, I’ll report 
for you that you just overheard something on the street; 
and I’ll try to get past with it. If I can’t, you’ll see me 
here soon again; and soon anyway, if you don’t mind, 
please.” 

“ I wouldn’t mind,” Ruth said simply, “ but I’ll not be 
here. I’m leaving Paris in the morning.” 

“Ho! Whereto?” 

“ I applied day before yesterday for field work and got 
it; so I’m going to Picardy.” 

“ That’s no address. What part ? ” 

“ Roisel.” 

“ Hmm ! ” 

Was he evolving — she wondered — the fact that De 


TO PICARDY 


137 


Trevenac’s order to someone to go to Roisel had been 
delivered to her ? 

Gerry had not got that far. He was thinking that this 
strange girl, so unlike any other one whom he had known 
well, was evidently determined to watch for herself the 
outcome about Roisel. He was thinking, too, that Roisel 
was decidedly an inconvenient place for him to visit. To 
be sure, it was in that direction that Agnes Ertyle would 
be at work, for the hospital units, to which she was 
attached, were caring for casualties from the Fifth Army; 
but till she would be about that part of Picardy, he would 
have no errands likely to take him there. And he wished 
that he had ; or that this girl would soon again be where 
he could see her. 

The days when he could be free from duty were few 
and brief now ; and with the swift onset of spring they 
were certain to be fewer. For tremendous movements — 
the most stupendous in all human history — were clearly 
imminent ; men, and women too, were certain to be called 
upon to die in number beyond all past calculation. 

Gerry Hull did not think of himself as one of those 
certain to die; neither did he think of himself as one 
likely to live. Long ago he had attained that new imbue- 
ment of being, independent of all estimates of continuance 
of self, which was content with disposing of the present 
hours as best might be. So he had been spending his 
hours, whenever possible, with Agnes Ertyle; his next 
distant day was to be with her. And heretofore there had 
been no other desire to disturb him. 

Now he was conscious — not of any inclination to spend 
an hour away from Agnes when he might possibly be with 


138 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


her — but only of concern for this blue-eyed, light-haired, 
warm, ardent girl from among his own people. 

“ I don’t know what else you’re doing, Cynthia Gail,” 
he said both names as he had that time he had carried 
her, “but I suppose it’s dangerous. That’s all right,” he 
added hastily, “if the danger’s necessary; if it’s not — 
well, it’s foolishness, you know. I wouldn’t ask you to 
stop doing anything which could catch us another haul like 
De Trevenac ; but that may be more than a deadly game.” 
He held out his hand to her and, when she placed hers 
in his, he held her fingers firmly. “Don’t be foolish, 
please !” 

“ Don’t you ! ” she pleaded to him in return ; and the 
sudden broaching of the passion which had been below 
astounded her as much as it dumfounded him. “You 
take no regard for yourself — none, none at all ! ” 

“That’s — newspaper nonsense,” he managed. He 
released her hand, but her grasp held him now and he 
could not break it except violently. 

“It’s not! I’ve talked to men who know you, who’ve 
flown with you ! They all say the same thing ; and they 
all love you for it; you’ve no regard for yourself, numbers 
against you or anything when you’ve something you’ve 
determined to do! You do it! Oh, I wouldn’t have you 
not — I wouldn’t want you different. But the same need 
now doesn’t exist ! ” 

Her fingers had slipped from him and they stood back 
a bit, both breathing hard and very flushed as they faced 
each other. 

“We’re outnumbered in France this spring as never 
before,” he informed her soberly. “ It’s not generally— 


TO PICARDY 


139 


discussed; but, since Russia’s absolutely out, that’s the 
fact.” 

“ I know,” she said. “ But what I meant was that you, 
and just a few others, aren’t the only Americans here 
now. Oh, I’ve been able to understand why you’ve flown 
and fought as you have, why your friends are almost all 
fallen now and you, only by the grace of our God, are left ! 
I think I understood some of your feeling even before I 
knew you and heard you speak. You and your friends 
whom you thought I insulted — you, for a while, had to 
do the fighting for all America; a score or so of you had 
to do, you felt, for a hundred million of us who wouldn’t 
come in! But we’re coming now; a good many of us 
are here ! ” 

“Many?” he repeated. “A couple of hundred thou- 
sand among millions. And the German millions are 
almost ready to strike! Forgive me, I didn’t mean to 
scold you ever again for America; but — oh, you’ll see! 
The husbands, and fathers, and the boys of France, the 
husbands, and fathers, and the boys of England taking the 
blow again, giving themselves to the guns to save us all 
while our young men watch ! ” 

She gazed up at him, but stayed silent now. Terror 
seized her that she had done only harm, that she had 
stirred him to greater regardlessness. His anger against 
her people, whom she defended, had — as at that first time 
— banished his feeling for her. When he gave her his 
hand again, he barely touched her fingers; and he was 
gone. 

Returning that night to his squadron at the front, he 
wrote her an apology; but, after reading it over, tore it 


140 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


up. His squadron was stationed far to the east and south 
of Roisel ; and there was at that time nothing in the mili- 
tary situation to give him greater concern for that par- 
ticular sector. Yet when news arrived he scanned it 
quickly for report of operations about Roisel. However, 
though he twice got leave of a day, he did not on either 
occasion penetrate farther into Picardy than the little 
city where Lady Agnes now lived. 

All along the front, from Switzerland to the sea, the 
calm continued; but few on either side of that line held 
illusions as to the nature of that calm. Then, as all the 
world knows, suddenly upon a morning the storm broke. 

Gerry Hull received the bulletins which came over the 
military wire which brought him also his orders. These 
orders were for his squadron at once to move and report 
for service at the earliest possible moment at a certain 
point in Picardy — which orders, as orders usually go, 
were unexplained except as the news bulletins gave them 
meaning. 

The news, however, left no loopholes for doubt. The 
great German assault, which had begun the morning 
before, already had developed a complete break-through 
of the British front. The Germans, in one tremendous 
dash, had overrun the first lines of defense, the second, 
and the third ; they were advancing now in open country 
with only remnants of an army before them; and the 
center of this huge wave of the enemy advance was what 
had been the French village of Roisel. 


CHAPTER X 


THE GREAT ATTACK 

T HE English guns began it. 

To the world the great battle started with the Ger- 
man onslaught of the morning of that Thursday, the 
twenty-first of March; but to Ruth, the beginning was 
with the English guns — the guns of the evening before, 
rolling and resounding over the Picardy plain. 

The night seemed to have embarked upon stillness in 
its earlier hours. The “line” — that dim, neighboring 
bulwark descending from the far indefiniteness of the 
North Sea to approach close to the little hamlet of Mire- 
vaux, to seem indeed to point into Mirevaux but for a 
twist which turned it away and deflected it, sweeping 
southward, and east, and south again toward the farther 
fastness of the Alps — the line had been absolutely quiet. 
A great many airplanes had been up during the afternoon, 
Ruth had observed as she gazed toward the line from 
Mirevaux ; their wings had specked the sky of the twilight. 
When the afterglow was gone and the moon held the 
heavens, little colored lights flashed frequently before the 
stars of the east, marking where many night-flying pilots 
plied on their errands; but these signals seemed at first 
not to be for the guns. The moon illumined a drowsy 
Mirevaux, war-ravaged, but rewon, and dreaming itself 
secure again behind that barrier of earth, and men, and 


142 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


guns, and gas, and airplanes over the slopes of the east 
which the English held. 

And not alone Mirevaux so dreamed. Many persons 
of far wider information than the French peasants and 
without the French folks’ love of their own home farms 
to influence them, also imagined Mirevaux quite safe — 
the hard-headed and quite practical, though impulsive per- 
sons who made up a certain American committee for the 
restoration of war-ravaged lands, had moved, and sec- 
onded, and decreed in committee meeting that Mirevaux 
was definitely and finally removed from the zone of 
invasion and, therefore, that the committee’s representa- 
tive in Mirevaux should be authorized to expend for 
temporary and permanent restoration so many thousands 
of francs a month. 

It was the useful expenditure of these sums which had 
brought Ruth Alden, as assistant and associate to Mrs. 
Gregory Mayhew, to Mirevaux from Roisel in the first 
week of March and which, upon the quiet moonlit evening 
of that Wednesday, the twentieth, detained Ruth at the 
cottage of old Grand’mere Bergues, who with her grand- 
children — Victor and petite Marie — had outstayed the 
German occupation of Mirevaux from August of the 
first year of the war to the great retreat of February, 
1917, when the enemy went back to the Hindenburg line, 
destroying unremovable property and devastating orchard 
and farm. 

Grand’mere Bergues stood at the door of the little cot- 
tage which, last autumn, had been restored as well as 
obtainable materials permitted. The moon shone down 
upon what had been an orchard ; but the Germans, before 


THE GREAT ATTACK 


143 


their retreat, had systematically sawed through the trunk 
of each tree till the tree fell. The French, as quickly as 
possible, had regrafted the top upon the stump and thus 
had saved a great many trees; and the new buds upon 
them, showing that these had survived the winter and 
would bloom and fruit again, brought to Grand’mere 
Bergues a sense of triumph over the Boche. 

Grand’mere Bergues needed all the triumph she could 
feel. Her son, Laurent, lay in one of those white-crossed 
graves of the defenders of Douaumont at Verdun; her 
own daughter Mathilde, who had married a merchant of 
Carnieres, which was beyond Cambrai, had not been heard 
of since the first year of the war. Laurent’s wife — well, 
she had been a young and beautiful woman and Grand’- 
mere Bergues either told nothing of what had been her 
fate when the Germans came or else she told it again and 
again in abandon. 

“They bound me to the bedpost; and one said — he 
was a pink- faced pig, with the pink — ugh ! — all about his 
head through his closecropped hair — he said, ‘Remove 
her.’ 

“ ‘ No ; it is better to let her see. But keep her quiet ! ’ 

“ So they stuffed in my mouth . . . 

Ruth well knew the frightful facts; she knew that, 
three years ago, there had been little Laurent — a baby — 
too. 

“ These things,” said Grand’mere Bergues, “ you did not 
believe at first.” 

“ No,” Ruth said, “ we did not.” 

“It is not to be wondered at,” the old woman said 
simply. “ The wonderful fact is that now you arrive ! ” 


144 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


She trudged along beside Ruth through the ruin of the 
orchard and halted with her hand upon the bough of an 
apple tree which was one of those that the French had 
grafted and saved. 

“ I saw them cut this down; they measure so many cen- 
timeters from the ground; they start to saw; they cut so 
far through; they stop; it is destroyed! Ah, but I shall 
pluck apples this August, oh, beast pigs, brutes below all 
others!” she apostrophized quite calmly. “How may 
those who have the form of men be such fools, too? ” she 
asked Ruth. “When they are here — those who bound 
me to the bed and their comrades — they say that they 
would be the friends of France. The English, they say, 
are our enemies; we shall see! Well, the English are 
about us now as they have been; and look, I have come 
of my own will away from Victor and Marie, leaving 
them alone, sleeping. Such danger now! And you, 
Mademoiselle, you are younger and as beautiful even as 
my Laurent’s wife — you go on, quite safe, unaccom- 
panied.” 

Ruth proceeded quite safely, indeed ; but not unaccom- 
panied for long. The English, as Grand’mere Bergues 
said, were all about — a regiment was lying in reserve 
just then beyond Mirevaux; and a certain young lieu- 
tenant, who had been one of the guests at a tea at Mrs. 
Mayhew’s cottage a week ago, was awaiting Ruth upon 
the road. His name was Haddon-Staples ; but he was 
so like “ 1582” of the Ribot that Ruth had dubbed him 
to herself “ 1583” and she appreciated him hugely. 

Hardly had he caught step with her when the guns 
began — the English guns. 


THE GREAT ATTACK 


145 


The firing was heavy — no heavier, perhaps, than Ruth 
often had heard at night during the days near Mirevaux, 
but tonight it seemed to Ruth to have a more intense, 
more nervous quality. 

“Box barrage, sounds like/’ Haddon-Staples volun- 
teered when Ruth stopped to study the direction of the 
action. “Not much on, I should say. Trench raid for 
information, probably.” 

“ When do you suppose they’ll attack ? ” 

They, of course, were the^Germans. “Oh, any time. 
That’s what we’re out for a bit of a line on tonight — 
naturally. Sooner they try it, the better, don’t you 
think?” 

“You’re — we’re all ready for them?” Ruth asked. 

“ Ready as may be,” the Englishman returned politely. 
“They’ve rather the advantage of us, you know — nu- 
merically. A good bit of a farm here again, isn’t there? ” 
he shifted the subject, gazing over the level, planted fields. 

Ruth talked with him about other things; but her 
thought remained with those English guns firing and fir- 
ing, with the English gunners serving them, with the 
English infantry raiding “for information” or lying in 
wait for the certain-coming attack of an enemy having a 
recognized advantage — numerically. The reason that 
the enemy possessed that advantage was, she knew, that 
America was not yet in force on the battle line. But for 
that tardiness, she had not yet heard one word of censure 
from Englishmen or from the French. 

The guns were still going when she went to bed at half- 
past ten — the English guns with the German guns at- 
tempting only ordinary reply. So Ruth slept until a 


146 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


quaking of the ground and a sudden, tremendous new 
impact of sound sat her up in the darkness, awake. She 
gazed at her watch; it was half-past four. German guns 
now were sending the monstrous missiles whose detona- 
tion shook the land; it was the English guns which at- 
tempted the reply. Ruth went to her window and gazed 
out in the dark toward the lines until the gray of dawn 
discovered a thin gray mist over the ground — a mist 
of the sort making for surprises of attacking forces upon 
the forces defending; and that frightful fire of the Ger- 
man guns meant that, this morning at last, the Germans 
were attacking. 

Ruth dressed as Mrs. Mayhew and everyone else in the 
house was dressing. The thunder of the guns, the never- 
ceasing concussion of the bursting shells rolled louder and 
nearer. 

“ That must be the start of their offensive,” Mrs. May- 
hew said. “ Let them try ; they’ll never get through ! ” 

“ No,” Ruth said; and she believed it. She thought of 
the German attacks upon Ypres in the early years of the 
war; of their failure at Verdun last year and the slow 
progress of the allies when they had been on the offensive 
— the French in Champagne and the English on the 
Somme. The others also believed it. 

“ What will you be about today, dear ? ” Mrs. Mayhew 
asked Ruth. 

“ Oh ! ” — Ruth needed the moment of the exclamation 
to recollect. “ I’m going to Aubigny to see that our last 
lot of portable houses got there all right and that the 
people know how to put them up.” 

“ Then come with me ; I’m going to Ham,” Mrs. May- 


THE GREAT ATTACK 


147 


hew offered, and during the morning, quite as usual, they 
drove off together in Mrs. Mayhew’s car about their busi- 
ness of helping rehouse and shelter and refurnish the 
peasants of Picardy. 

While they rode in the bright morning sunshine — for 
the mist was cleared now — guns, English guns emplaced 
far behind the lines and whose presence they had never 
suspected before, thundered out; their concussion added 
to the trembling of the ground; and through the air swept 
sounds — swift, shrill, and ominous — not heard on the 
days before. 

“ Shells ? ” Mrs. Mayhew asked. 

Ruth nodded. She had heard the shriek of the shells 
which had missed the Ribot and passed over. “ Shells, I 
think,” she said. They were passing peasants on the 
road now — families of peasants or such relics of families 
as the war had left ; some, who had a horse, drove a wagon 
heaped high with the new household goods which they had 
gained since the invasion; some pushed barrows; others 
bore bundles only. 

Ruth, who was driving, halted the car again and again. 

“ Where are you going ? ” she asked. 

“ We do not know,” the peasants answered. 

Ruth drove on into the little city of Ham, where ambu- 
lances bearing the English wounded were arriving in an 
endless line from the front. Mrs. Mayhew had seen 
wounded men — many, many of them — in the Paris hos- 
pitals ; Ruth too had seen wounded — almost two score of 
people variously hurt aboard the Ribot. But here they 
came, not as blesses arrived in Paris, but from the battle 
field and, not by scores, but by hundreds, by thousands ! 


148 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


Ruth went sick when she saw them. She thought of 
Hubert, her gentle-minded, sensitive Hubert, now helping 
to handle men so hurt. She thought of Agnes Ertyle when 
she saw English women, as well as English men, receiving 
the forms from the ambulances at the great casualty clear- 
ing stations where new rows of tents hastily were going 
up. She thought, of course, of Gerry Hull. She believed 
that he was far removed from this zone of battle; but she 
did not yet know — no one yet knew — how far the fight- 
ing front was extending. He might be flying at this mo- 
ment over a front most heavily involved; she knew that 
he would wish to be; and how he would fight — fight as 
never before and without regard of himself to check dis- 
aster due, as he would believe, to the tardiness of his 
country. 

She saw a boy in the uniform of the Royal Flying Corps 
lying upon a stretcher in the sunshine; he was smoking, 
but he took his cigarette from his lips to smile at her as 
she gazed down at him. 

British troops — strong, young, uninjured men — 
marching in battalions; English guns and ammunition 
lorries ; more English infantry and guns poured into the 
streets of the city, passed through them and on to the 
front and more came. The wounded from the front and 
the French folk from the farms and villages passed on 
their way to the rear ; but no one else came back. 

“The line is steadying itself; it’s holding,” the rumor 
ran in Ham during the afternoon. “ The Boche gained 
at first — everyone on the offensive gains at first — but 
now we’re holding them; we’re slaughtering them as 
they come on.” Then more alarming reports spread. 


THE GREAT ATTACK 


149 


“ They’ve overrun the first lines at points ; but the others 
are holding or are sure to — the Boche are doing better 
than at Verdun.” Then that was denied. “ They’re not 
doing so well. We’re holding them now. They’re com- 
ing on. They’re driving us back.” 

Not even the wounded and the refugees, still streaming 
from the front, brought reliable report ; the battle was too 
immense for that. And into the battle, English reinforce- 
ments steadily went forward. So Ruth was sure only 
that the great battle, which the world had been awaiting, 
was begun; she could know nothing of the true fortune 
of that first tremendous day. She was finding, however, 
that Mrs. Mayhew and she could not go about their work 
of restoration. They turned their car upon the road and, 
inviting refugees, they carried the peasants swift miles 
along the roads which they had been trudging; let them 
off ten miles or so to the rear and returned for more. 

But they urged no one to flee ; they simply assisted those 
already in flight and who would not be turned back. And 
that evening, which was more quiet than the evening be- 
fore — or at least it seemed so in comparison to the day — 
they returned to Mirevaux. The worst was past, they 
believed; the line, the English and the French line which 
for more than three years had stood and held against the 
Germans, had reformed and reestablished itself after the 
first shake of the tremendous onslaught. 

And so it still seemed to those in Mirevaux that next 
morning of Friday when, after breakfast, Ruth discussed 
again with Mrs. Mayhew what she would do that day. 
They were agreeing that they should be calm and show 
confidence and go about their work as usual, when they 


150 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


heard the hoofs of a galloping horse upon the road. The 
rider pulled up short before their cottage and Ruth, run- 
ning to the door, saw “ 1583 ” — the English officer who 
had waited for her upon the road from Grand’mere 
Bergues’ the night before last. 

“ They’ve broken through ! ” he called to Ruth. 

“ Through ! ” Ruth cried. “ The Germans ! ” 

“We can’t hold them! They’re coming on! Fifty 
thousand of them ! They’ve broken through — through ! 
We couldn’t hold them ! ” 

Ruth recoiled upon the door. Mrs. Mayhew was be- 
side her, calling out to the officer; but he, having given 
the alarm to that house, was going on. Ruth gazed 
vacantly over the smooth, replowed, replanted French 
fields and the rows of grafted orchard trees toward 
Grand’mere Bergues’ ; and her mind gave her, in a flash, 
vision of the broken dam of the English line with the 
German flood bursting through; and before that flood she 
saw again the refugees of yesterday in flight; she saw 
Grand’mere Bergues with petite Marie and Victor caught 
again, perhaps ; she saw the wounded on the roads and in 
the tents of the clearing stations, cut off by the Germans 
and taken; she saw the English troops — the strong, 
young men whom she had witnessed marching to the front 
yesterday — battling bravely, desperately, but shot down, 
bayoneted and overrun. 

“They’ve broken through. We couldn’t hold them! 
They’re coming on!” 

Ruth gazed from the ground to the sky and she saw — • 
not in her fancy but visually above her now — airplanes, 
allied airplanes flying in squadrons from the rear toward 


THE GREAT ATTACK 


151 


that front which she could not see but where, she knew, 
the line on the ground was broken and gone and where 
the Germans, who were “coming on,” must be pouring 
through. And her mind showed her in the pilot’s seat of 
one of those airplanes — or in one just like them some- 
where on that broken front — Gerry Hull. Vividly she 
fancied his face as he flew to fight and to make up, as well 
as one man might, for the millions of his people who 
should have been yesterday and today upon that broken 
battle line where the enemy, at last, had broken through ! 

Ruth could not know then all that a break “ through ” 
meant; no one could know; for in all the fighting in 
France, no army had broken “through” before. She 
could know only that upon her, as an American quite as 
much as Gerry Hull, was the charge to do her uttermost. 

But what was she to do ? 

Gerry, arriving that morning at the airdrome to which 
he had been ordered, possessed the advantage over her of 
no uncertainty but of definite assignment to duty. 

During his training and his service with the French, he 
had piloted many sorts of machines. He had flown the 
reconnaissance and photographic biplanes with duty merely 
to bring back information of the enemy’s movements; he 
had flown the bombing machines entrusted with destruc- 
tion, by aerial torpedo, of batteries, and ammunition 
dumps behind the enemy’s front; he had flown the “ artil- 
lery machines” — the biplanes with wireless by which he, 
or his observer, signaled to the French batteries the fall 
of their shots and guided the guns to the true targets ; he 
had flown, as all the world knew, the swift-darting avions 
de chasse — the airplanes of pursuit — the Nieuports and 


152 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


the Spads in which, as combat pilot, he had dueled ten 
thousand feet up in the sky with the German combat pilots 
and shot some twenty of them down. And it was while 
he was still in the French service that the flying men be- 
gan to form new squadrons for strange service distinct 
from mere bomb-dropping, from guiding guns or sending 
back information or from fighting other airplanes. Pilots 
of these squadrons started to attack, by bomb and machine 
guns, the enemy infantry and artillery and horse. They 
had special, new “ships” made for them — one-seater or 
two-seater biplanes mounting two or three machine guns 
and built to stand the strain of diving down from a height 
and “ flattening out” suddenly only a few yards from the 
ground while the pilot with his machine guns raked the 
ranks of troops over which he flew. 

It was in one of these new raiding airplanes, accord- 
ingly, and as leader of a flight that Gerry Hull was going 
to battle this day. The field, from which he had arisen, 
had been far back of the English lines — so far back, 
indeed, that it still was secure as Gerry guided his flight of 
six machines up into the clear spring sunshine. His was 
one of the single-seaters; he was alone, therefore, as he 
led on to the north and east ; and he was glad this morning 
to be alone. The exaltation which almost always per- 
vaded him as he rose into the sky with his motor running 
powerfully and true, possessed him at its most this morn- 
ing; it brought to him, together with the never-dulling 
wonder of his endowment of wings and his multiplied 
strength therefrom, a despite of fate which made him 
reckless yet calm. 

His altimeter told that he had climbed to some four 


THE GREAT ATTACK 


153 


thousand feet and content with that height and flying level, 
he glanced about and saw that the machines which fol- 
lowed him were flattening out too and in position. He 
gazed at his mapboard where was displayed chart of the 
land below with notation of the battle line — such battle 
line as still existed — corrected up to the last hour by 
photographs and visual observations made by other pilots 
that morning. It was the strip of ravaged and restored 
land 6ver which he was flying; clearly he could see the 
cross-streaked spots of the cities; on his right, Ham; on 
his left, Peronne and Roisel. Roads spider-webbed about 
them; tiny villages clustered. Immediately below he 
could see even, decent patches of planted fields, gardens, 
meadows; he could make out, too, more minute objects — 
the peasants’ cottages and their trees, the tiny roofs of the 
new portable houses supplied by the Americans. 

He could see the specks which were people upon the 
roads, gathered in groups moving together; where the 
specks formed into a long, ordered line, he knew that 
they were troops and moving toward the battle, probably. 
He himself was flying so fast that the direction of the 
slow movement upon the roads could not appear; but he 
could guess that the irregular series of specks were ref- 
ugees in flight. Shells were smashing beside them — 
shrapnel, high explosive, and gas. He could recognize 
easily the puff of the shrapnel distinct from the burst of 
the high explosive shells. He could not distinguish the 
gas shells ; but he knew that the Germans were using them, 
deluging with gas the zone behind the battle to a depth 
unknown before. 

He gazed forward to the ground where the German 


154 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


infantry now was advancing — ground sloping so slightly 
hereabouts that, but for the shadows, it would have 
seemed flat. But the morning sun of March was still 
circling low, making all bright a strip where shells, in 
enormous number, erupted; just short of this strip, the 
sunlight ceased sharply in a shadow which did not move ; 
the bright strip therefore was the eastern slope of a hill 
and the shadow was its western descent — a slope where, 
at this moment, the English must be attempting a stand. 

Gerry gazed to the right to try to find and, with his 
eyes, follow the line which ran from this hill ; but he could 
discover none; he glanced to the left and failed there also 
to discern support for the English soldiers on the hill. 
Surely there must have been support of some sort there- 
abouts; but the Germans had overwhelmed or swept it 
back. Germans — German infantry in mass, Germans 
deployed, German guns engaged and German guns mov- 
ing forward followed by their trains — Germans pos- 
sessed the ground before that sunlit slope and on its right 
and left. 

He looked farther away to the south and to the north ; 
and he could witness the truth which already he had been 
told. The “line,” in the sense in which one had known 
the line for three years, was swept away — first, second, 
third, and all supporting systems of defense; attempts to 
form new lines behind the old had failed. Open field 
battle, swift and Napoleonic, was established; for this 
battle the Germans had gathered men by the hundred 
thousands, guns by the thousand while the English here 
had — well the remnants of brigades and divisions which 
here and there held to the slope of a hill. 


THE GREAT ATTACK 


155 


Gerry wondered, as he gazed down, whether these men 
on the nearest slope knew that — already half surrounded 
— there was no support behind them. He was steering 
lower as he neared them, drawing to himself a shell or 
two from some German anti-aircraft gun which he did not 
trouble to try to place. Airplanes appeared all about him 
now, above, before, behind, and on both sides; but they 
were, most of them, English or French; here and there 
he glimpsed a German machine; but none of these ap- 
proached him to attack. For if the ground that morning 
was the Germans’, the air was the allies’ ; it was only from 
the air, from him and his flight of five machines trailing 
behind him and from other similar flights of fighting air- 
planes likewise arriving, that any help could reach those 
English about to be attacked. 

For the storm of German shells, which a few seconds 
before had been sweeping the slope, lifted suddenly; 
before the hill and from the flank, specks which were Ger- 
man storm troops moved forward ; and Gerry, turning his 
head, saw that the other machines followed him in posi- 
tion. In signal to them, he rocked his ship a little. Steady- 
ing again, he leaned forward and saw that his machine 
guns were ready; softly he touched the release levers of 
his bombs. His hands went back to his controls and, 
gazing below at the German ranks again, he put the nose 
of his machine down and dived. 

Ordinarily, during the tremendous seconds of the drop, 
he could see nothing but the spot of earth at which his 
eyes were focused, leaping up and up at him; ordinarily, 
sensation stopped with the feeling of fall and the rush 
of that seeming suck of destruction. But now his senses 


156 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


took in many things. His eyes never lost the swelling 
specks of gray which were becoming German storm troops 
leaping to the attack; but his eyes took in, too, the file of 
forms in English brown lying waiting over the crest of 
the hill. 

They were scattered and few — very, very few, he saw; 
fewer even than he had feared when he gazed down upon 
them from two thousand feet higher. He had counted 
the forms of the dead among the holders of the hill; he 
could not, in that flash of vision, see that the many, many 
were dead; he could see only that, as he dropped down 
above them, few of the forms were moving. They were 
drawing together in little groups with bayonets flashing in 
the sunshine, drawing together in tens and scores and half 
hundreds for last desperate defense of the hill against the 
thousands coming to take it. 

The puffing jets of German machine-gun fire, enfilad- 
ing the hill from the right and from the left, shone over 
the ground in the morning sunshine where German ma- 
chine gunners had worked their way about to fire in front 
of their charging troops; Gerry saw no such jets from 
the hill, though the charging men in gray must be in plain 
sight and within point-blank range at that instant from 
the English on the hill. The English were short of am- 
munition, that meant. 


CHAPTER XI 


THE RESISTANCE 

B UT the English were going to fight. 

This knowledge came to Gerry through the rush 
and suck of the final yards of his three thousand foot 
fall; mechanically, automatically his hands were tugging 
at his controls, his feet braced firm on his rudder bar as 
he began to bring his machine out of the fall. He had 
come down at terrific speed with his motor only partly 
shut off ; he had no time, and no need, to watch his speed 
indicator; he knew well enough when he was on edge of 
the breaking strain which his wings and wires could stand. 
He slanted more directly toward the Germans and he was 
very low above the ground; still half falling, half flying 
— and at greater speed than ever he could have flown — 
he hurled himself at them, flattening out at perhaps fifty 
feet from the earth. 

He knew — not from anything which he consciously saw 
nor from any conscious reckoning but by the automatism 
of realization and the reflex from it which guided and 
coordinated his mind, nerve, and muscle in these terrific 
instants of attack — he knew that German machine gun- 
ners were firing at him ; he knew that German riflemen in 
the ranks which he was charging were giving him bursts 
of bullets as fast as they could fire; and his fingers which 
so tenderly had touched the release levers of his bombs, 
157 


158 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


pulled them positively now; with his other hand, which 
held to the control stick, he had gathered the lanyard 
which governed his machine gun; he had adjusted it so 
that the slightest tug would get the guns going; he gave 
that tug and the reassuring, familiar jet-jet of his guns 
firing through his airscrew combined with the burst of his 
bombs below and behind. 

His fingers went from his bomb levers to his throttle 
to open it wider ; the detonations which had followed him, 
ceased; his hand flew back to his lever and the bursts 
began again. All the time his hand on the control stick 
kept tension on the gun lanyards; ceaselessly those jets 
from his machine gun projected through the whorl of his 
airscrew. 

He was killing men. He could see them, not as he 
killed them, but some infinitesimal of a second before; 
very possibly, indeed, the bullets out of those jets of his 
machine guns already had pierced the white flashes under 
.the helmets which were faces of Germans gazing up at 
him or had riddled through the gray bulks of their bodies. 
But blood had not time to spot to the surface ; the shock 
of the bullets, even when they immediately killed, had 
not time to dissolve the tautness of those bodies and 
relax them and let them down before Gerry was 
flown over them and was gone. He had taken posi- 
tion, when high in the sky a few seconds earlier, so as 
to sweep the length of the waves of the Germans charging ; 
and though the swiftness of this sweep forbade him 
from seeing the results, he knew that with his machine 
guns alone he was taking off many; and though he 
could not now look back at all, he knew that his bombs, 


THE RESISTANCE 


159 


dropped from so close, must be killing many, many 
more. 

The Germans attested to that; they scattered and 
scurried before him; he had no row of gray forms for 
his target now ; to save his cartridges, he had to stop that 
steady pull on his lanyard ; he pursued groups, firing short 
bursts of bullets till they broke and scattered again. He 
was not fighting alone, of course; the machines in his 
flight all had followed him down. He outflew the men 
on the ground and, rising while he turned, he got view of 
the field over which he had swept; two of his machines 
which had followed him, were rising already; the others 
were still flying low, attacking with machine guns and 
bombs; and below them, that line of the German attack 
was halted and broken. He could see spaces where his 
bombs had exploded or where the machine-gun fire from 
the airplanes had been most effective and gray-clad forms 
strewed the ground ; between these spots, German officers 
were reforming ranks and getting men together again. 
Gerry opened his throttle wide and, circling, climbed a 
little more ; and then, he dove again and gave it to these 
gathering men. 

Gave them machine-gun fire alone, now ; for his bombs 
were gone. He could see the work of the bombs better, 
and sight of that work brought him grim exultation. He 
was glad that this morning he was no mere duelist of the 
sky, darting and feinting and dashing in, spinning about 
and diving high in the heavens to shoot down just one 
enemy ; here he had led an attack which had killed or dis- 
abled hundreds. This was no day to glory in single 
combat. 


160 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


He had overflown again the men on the ground and, 
climbing once more, he got view of the crest of the slope. 
It was gray ! Gray-clad men were swarming all over it ; 
gray — Germans! Brown men battled them; bayonets 
glinted in the sun; the brown men dropped; gray men 
toppled, too; but there were more of the gray all about. 
How they had got up there, Gerry could not tell; they 
might be some of those in the waves at which he had fired 
and who had gone on; they might be a different battalion 
which had charged in from the flank. They were there ; 
they had taken the hill; they were slaying the last of 
the English. Gerry saw the swirls of the brown and 
gray where a few survivors, surrounded, were 
fighting hand to hand to the last. He forced down 
the nose of his machine and dropped at them; he let 
go one burst of bullets into the gray; let go another and 
now, as he pulled on his lanyard, the airscrew before 
him whirled clear; the jets did not project through 
it; his machine guns were silent; their ammunition was 
spent. 

He had a mad impulse, when he realized this, to swerve 
lower and make himself and his machine a mighty pro- 
jectile to scythe those German heads with the edges of 
his wings; he could kill — he was calculating, in one of 
those flashes which consume no reckonable time, the num- 
ber of gray men he could hope to kill. Ten or a dozen, at 
most; and he had just slain — and therefore again that 
day might slay — a hundred. But that instinct did not 
decide him. Among the gray men, in the only groups 
upon which he could thus drop, were brown men, so with 
his free hand he pulled out his automatic pistol and, as he 


THE RESISTANCE 


161 


flew barely above the helmets of the men in the melee, he 
emptied the magazine. 

English soldiers glanced up at him ; ten feet below him 
were English boys, doomed, surrounded but fighting. It 
struck shame through Gerry the next moment when he 
was rising clear and safe that a few seconds before he 
could have been almost within hand reach of those English 
boys fighting to the end on the ground ; that, indeed, he 
had for a moment fought with them and then he had de- 
serted them to their death while he had flown free. He 
looked back, half banking his machine about; but already 
the battle upon that hill crest was over; the last of the 
English were killed. Gerry could return only to avenge 
them ; and the way to avenge was with refilled bomb racks 
and machine-gun magazines. 

That dive to the top of the hill had separated him from 
the other machines in his flight except one which was fol- 
lowing him on his return to the airdrome for ammunition 
and bombs. Gerry, gazing down, found disorganization 
more visible than when he had flown to the front. He 
could see the English troops, whom he had viewed ad- 
vancing upon the roads, spreading out and forming a line 
of resistance; but he could better realize how few these 
English were for the needs of this mighty emergency. 
They were taking positions, not with any possible hope of 
holding them against the German masses but only with 
determination to fight to delay the enemy a little as Gerry 
had just seen some of them fight. 

He sighted his field and he swooped down upon it, 
leaping out as soon as he stopped. He saw that, as he had 
suspected, rifle or machine-gun bullets had gone through 


162 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


his wings; but they had not pierced spars or struts; his 
wires were tight. While men refilled his bomb racks and 
magazines and gave him fuel, he reported what he had 
seen and received new orders. 

His superiors recognized that the disaster, instead of 
lessening, was growing greater each hour. Powerful 
French and English reserves were on th$ way but they 
were still distant ; meanwhile the local reserves were being 
used up. The English were gathering together and throw- 
ing in anyone and everyone to try to delay the German 
advance; there were kilometers where only this scratch 
army offered resistance — sutlers, supply men, and cooks 
armed with rifles and machine guns fighting beside Chinese 
coolies impressed into a fighting line. 

Gerry passed a word with an English pilot whom he 
knew well and who was just back from over another part 
of the battle field. 

“Hello, Hull! Your people rather getting into it* over 
my way ! ” 

“Who? How ?” Gerry called. 

“ One of your engineer regiments were working behind 
the lines ; line came back on ’em. They grabbed guns and 
went in and gave it to the Huns ! Should have seen ’em. 
Can yet; they’re keeping at it.” 

The blood tingled hotter in Gerry’s veins; his people 
were fighting! His countrymen, other than the few who 
from the first had been fighting in the foreign legion or 
scattered in Canadian regiments or here and there in the 
flying forces, were having part in this battle! No great 
part, at that ; and only an accidental part. Simply a regi- 
ment of American engineers, who had been on construe- 


THE RESISTANCE 


163 


tion work for the British Fifth Army, had thrown down 
their shovels and tools, grabbed guns, and gone in. 

“You’ve some good girls — some awfully good girls 
out that way, too ! ” the English pilot cried. 

Gerry was in his seat and starting his motor so he just 
heard that ; he rose from the field and for several moments 
all his conscious attention was given to catching proper 
formation with the machines returning along with him to 
the battle ; but subconsciously his mind was going to those 
girls, the American girls — those “awfully good” girls 
out that way. He did not know what they might be doing 
this day — what it was which won from the English pilot 
the praise in his voice. Gerry had known that American 
girls had been out “ that way,” he had known about the 
Smith College girls, particularly — the score or so who 
called themselves the Smith College Relief Unit and who, 
he understood, had been supplying the poor peasants and 
looking after old people and children and doing all sorts 
of practical and useful things in little villages about Nesle 
and Ham. He did not know any of those girls; but he 
did know Cynthia Gail; and now, as he found himself in 
flight formation and flying evenly, thought of her emerged 
more vividly than it had previously upon that morning. 

When the news had reached him far away on the even- 
ing before that the Germans had broken through in that 
neighborhood where she was, he had visualized her in his 
fears as a helpless victim before the enemy’s advance. The 
instincts she had stirred in him were to hurry him to her 
protection ; that morning as he had looked down upon the 
refugees on the roads, mentally he had put her among the 
multitude fleeing and to be defended. But the shout of 


164 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


the English pilot had made Gerry think of her as one of 
those protecting — not precisely a combatant, perhaps, 
but certainly no mere non-combatant. 

Of course the English pilot had not mentioned Cynthia 
Gail ; but Gerry knew that if American girls were proving 
themselves that morning, Cynthia Gail was one of them. 
He had been able, in vivid moments, to see Agnes Ertyle; 
for he knew exactly what she would be doing; but his 
imagination had failed to bring before hirti Cynthia Gail. 
In the subconscious considerations which through the 
violence of his physical actions dwelt on such ideas, this 
failure had seemed proof that Agnes Ertyle alone stirred 
the deepest within him; but now those visions of the un- 
seen which came quite unbidden and which he could not 
control showed him again and again the smooth-skinned, 
well-formed face with the blue, brave eyes under 
thoughtful brows, and the slender, rounded figure of 
the girl whom he knew as Cynthia Gail. And whereas 
previously he had merely included her among the many 
in peril, now dismay for her particularly throbbed 
through him. 

Her words when they last were together — “A score or 
so of you felt you had to do the fighting for a hundred 
million of us; but you haven't now, for we're coming; a 
good many of us are here" — no longer seemed a mere 
appeal to him to spare himself; it told him that she was 
among those on the ground endeavoring to govern the 
fate of this day. 

He sighted, before and below, a road where German 
guns were being rushed forward ; dove down upon them, 
leading his flight again and bombed the guns, machine- 


THE RESISTANCE 


165 


gunned the artillerymen; he bombed a supply train of 
motor lorries; he flew over and machine-gunned two 
motor cars with German offlcers and saw one of the cars 
overturn. But German combat pilots were appearing in 
force all about; Gerry gazed up and saw a big, black- 
crossed two-seater accompanied by two single-seaters 
maneuvering to dive down upon him. 

He swerved off, therefore, and fled. For a moment he 
longed for his swift-darting little Spad instead of this 
heavier ship which bore bombs in addition to machine 
guns. But the Spads of his comrades and English com- 
bat machines appeared ; and the German pilots above did 
not dare to dive. They circled, awaiting reinforcement 
which swiftly came — triplane Fokkers mostly, Gerry 
thought. As he watched them, he forgot all about the 
ground; for the French and the English pilots, ten thou- 
sand feet above him, were starting an attack. He circled 
and climbed a few thousand feet; he knew that with his 
heavy raiding machine, he could not join that battle. But 
heavy German airplanes — for observation, for photo- 
graphic work, or to guide the advancing German guns — 
were appearing in the lower levels and slipping forward 
under the protection of the Fokkers and the Albatrosses. 
Gerry went for one of these and turned it back; he went 
for another — a two-seater — and he saw the German 
machine gunner fall forward ; he saw the pilot’s hooded 
head drop ; he saw flame flash from the gasoline tank ; the 
two-seater tumbled and went down. 

He dared not follow it with his eyes even for the short 
seconds of its fall ; machines from the battle above were 
coming down where he was. A Fokker dropped, turning 


166 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


over and over to escape a Spad which came down on its 
tail and got it anyway ; now a Spad streaked past in flame. 
A two-seater — a German machine marked by the big 
black crosses under its wings — glided slowly down in a 
volplane. Gerry circled up to it, approaching from the 
side with the lanyard of his machine guns ready; but the 
German pilot raised an arm to signal helplessness. His 
gunner was dead across his guns ; his engine was gone ; he 
had kept control enough only to glide; and he was gliding, 
Gerry saw, with the sun on his right. That meant he was 
making for German-held ground. He came beside the 
gliding two-seater, therefore, and signaled to the west. 
The German obeyed and, while Gerry followed, he glided 
to the field in the west and landed. 

Gerry came down beside him and took the pilot prisoner; 
together they lifted the body of the German observer from 
his seat and laid him on the ground. Gerry possessed 
himself of the German’s maps and papers. 

The German pilot, who was about Gerry’s own age, had 
been a little dazed from the fight in the sky; but Gerry 
discovered that his willingness to surrender and the fact 
that he had made no attempt to destroy his own ma- 
chine upon landing was from belief that they had come 
down upon ground already gained by the Germans. 
Whether or not that was true, at least it appeared to be 
ground already abandoned by the English. Certainly no 
considerable English force existed between that position 
and the Germans whom Gerry had seen advancing two 
miles away. No batteries were in action nearby; the air- 
planes seemed to be standing in an oasis of battle. There 
was a road a couple of hundred yards to the south, and, 


THE RESISTANCE 


167 


seeing travel upon it, Gerry took his prisoner in that 
direction. 

He found refugees upon the road — patient, pitiful 
families of French peasants in flight, aiding one another 
and bearing poor bundles of their most precious posses- 
sions. The sight brought Gerry back to his first days of 
the war and to the feelings of the boy he had been in 
August, 1914, when he rushed across the channel from 
England to offer himself to the Red Cross in France and 
when he met the first refugees fleeing before von Kliick’s 
army out of Belgium and Normandy. He had seen noth- 
ing like this in France since then; and the years of war 
had not calloused him to these consequences. Indeed, 
they had brought to him more terrible realizations than 
the horror-struck boy of 1914 had been able to imagine. 
So these again were to be visited upon France! And 
because his people had watched for almost three years, 
had kept safely out ! 

His prisoner now turned to Gerry and spoke to him in 
French. 

“ It appears,” he corrected the error he had made when 
Gerry had taken him, “ that you are not my prisoner yet.” 

“ No,” Gerry said. “ Not yet.” 

A Ford truck passed the farm wains and the miserable 
column of marchers. The driver, Gerry saw, was in 
khaki and was a girl. She observed him and drew up. 

“ Hello,” she hailed alertly, taking in the situation at a 
glance. “ Do you want to get rid of your prisoner?” 

She was American — one of those “ awfully good” 
girls of whom the English had told him ! And, seeing her 
and hearing her voice, he knew what the English pilot 


168 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


had meant; and a bit of pride — tingling, burning pride 
for his people — flared up where the moment before had 
been only condemnation and despair. For this girl was no 
mere driver; she was in charge of the French — a cool, 
clear-headed competent commander of these foreign 
peasants from a village evacuated under her direction. She 
had, lying in the hay upon the floor of the truck, children 
injured by shell fire and English wounded whom she had 
found by the road. She had been under fire ; and, as soon 
as she could get these people a little farther to the rear, 
she was going back under fire to guide away more people. 
She was entirely unheroic about it ; why, that was the best 
thing she could do this day. Did he know something 
better for her to do? 

“ No,” Gerry said. “Are there many more American 
girls here? ” he asked, gazing toward the German advance. 

“We’re each — or two of us together are taking a vil- 
lage to get the people out,” the girl said ; and she named, 
at Gerry’s request, some of the girls and some of the 
villages. 

“ Do you know Cynthia Gail? ” he asked. 

“She was going back, the last I heard of her, to 
Mirevaux.” 

Gerry jerked. “ Mirevaux must be taken now.” 

“I heard guns that way. That’s all I know ” the girl 
said. She raced her engine ; Gerry knew she must go on. 
He left his prisoner in charge of a wounded English 
soldier who was able to walk and he returned to the ma- 
chines in the middle of the field. The captured German 
airplane was too damaged to remove; so he set it afire and 
mounted in his own. 


THE RESISTANCE 


169 


The battle in the sky had moved off somewhere else 
long ago ; neither in the air nor upon the ground was there 
engagement near him. He was without bombs but he 
still had machine-gun ammunition ; he directed his course 
as he rose into the air toward the hamlet of Mirevaux. 

He could see it clearly from a few hundred feet in the 
sky — see shells, which must be from German guns, 
smashing on a hillside on the south and shells, which must 
be from an English battery, breaking about Mirevaux. 
These told that the Germans indeed were in the village 
and some force of English were maintaining themselves 
on the hill. He observed a road west of Mirevaux upon 
which appeared such a procession as that to which he had 
entrusted his prisoner. The English position, which the 
Germans were shelling, flanked this road and partially 
protected it ; but Gerry could observe strong detachments, 
which must be German patrols, working about the English 
to the northwest and toward the road. 

The English could not see them ; nor could the refugees 
on the road catch sight of them. Gerry sighted a small, 
black motor car moving with the processions. Another 
American girl was driving that, probably ; or at least an 
American girl was somewhere down there — a girl with 
even, blue eyes which looked honestly and thoughtfully 
into one’", a girl with glorious hair which one liked to 
watch in the sunlight and which tempted one to touch it, 
a girl with soft, round little shoulders which he had 
grasped, a girl who had gone into the sea for him, and 
whom he had carried, warm in his arms. 

A couple of German 77s began puffing shrapnel up 
about Gerry; for he was flying low and toward them. 


170 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


But he went lower and nearer and directly at that patrol. 
Gerry could see that they were working nearer the road, 
with plenty of time to intercept that procession from 
Mirevaux ; and, though he gave those German guns a per- 
fect target for a few seconds, he dove down upon the 
patrol. They were Jaegers, he thought, as he began to 
machine-gun them — the sort whom the Germans liked to 
put in their advance parties and who had made their first 
record in Belgium. Gerry thought of those Jaegers, with 
the blood fury of battle hot on them, intercepting that 
blue-eyed girl; and when he had overflown them, he 
swung back and gave it to them again. 

One of the machine guns which had been firing at him 
from the ground or some of the shrapnel from the German 
77s had got him, now ; for his ship was drooping on the 
left; the wings had lost their lift. When he had over- 
flown the patrol the second time and tried to turn back, he 
could not get around; his controls failed. The best he 
could do was to half pull up into the wind and, picking a 
fairly flat place below, to come down crashing that droop- 
ing left wing, crashing the undercarriage, crashing struts 
and spars and tangling himself in wires and bracing cables 
but missing, somehow, being hurled upon the engine. He 
was alive and not very much hurt, though enmeshed help- 
lessly in the maze of the wreck; and the German gunners 
of the 77s either guessed he might be alive or it was their 
habit to make sure of every allied airplane which crashed 
within range, for a shell smashed thirty yards up the 
slope beyond him. 

Gerry, unable to extricate himself, crouched below the 
engine and the sheathing of the fuselage; a second shell 


THE RESISTANCE 


171 


smashed closer ; a third followed. Gerry felt blood flow- 
ing inside his clothes and he knew that he had been hit. 
But now the German gunner was satisfied or had other 
targets for his shells ; at any rate, the shells ceased. Gerry 
was about a mile away from the gun, he figured ; he had 
flown perhaps half a mile beyond the Jaeger patrols when 
he came down. The road, upon which he had seen the 
travel, ran just on the other side of a slope upon which he 
lay; he could see a stretch of it before it passed behind the 
rise of ground and he noticed a black motor car — pos- 
sibly the same which he had seen from overhead a few 
minutes before — drive toward him. He saw the car halt 
and a khaki-clad figure get down from the driver’s seat; 
it was a skirted figure and small beside the car ; it was a 
girl! 

The German gunner, who had been giving Gerry atten- 
tion, also saw the car; and, evidently, he had the range of 
that visible stretch of the road. A shell smashed close; 
and Gerry saw the girl leap back to her seat and run the 
car on while a second shell followed it. The rise hid the 
car from Gerry and, also, from the German gunners, for 
again the shelling shifted. 

The next shell smashed on the other side of the slope 
where the road again came into sight ; the car had not yet 
reached that part of the road, so Gerry knew that the 
German artillerymen were merely “ registering ” the road 
to be ready when the car should run into the open. But 
the car did not appear; instead, the girl crept about the 
side of the slope and advanced toward Gerry. She had 
lost her hat and the sun glowed and glinted upon glorious 
yellow hair. The pointer of the 77 did not see her or. he 


172 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


disregarded her while he waited for the car to appear on 
the registered stretch of the road; but a machine gunner 
with the Jaegers got sight and opened upon the slope. 
Gerry could see the spurt of the bullets in the dry dust of 
the planted field; the girl instantly recognized she was 
fired at and she sprang sidewise and came forward. 

“ Go back ! ” Gerry called. “ Keep away ! ” 

She stumbled and rolled and Gerry gasped, sure that 
she was hit; but she regained her feet instantly and, 
crouching, ran in behind him. Her hands — those slender, 
soft but strong little hands which he had first touched in 
Mrs. Corliss’ conservatory weeks ago — grasped him and 
held him. 

“Keep down,” Gerry begged of her. “Keep down 
behind the engine ! ” 

“You!” she murmured to him. “I thought when I 
saw you in the air and when you fought them so, that it 
might be you! Where are you hurt; oh, how much?” 

“ Not much; I don’t know where, exactly. Keep down 
behind the engine, Cynthia ! ” 

She was not hurt at all, he saw ; and though the tangle 
of wires enmeshed his legs, he was able to turn about and 
seize her and press her down lower. For the machine 
gunner was spraying the wreck of the airplane now. She 
was working with her strong little hands, trying to un- 
twist and unloop the wires to get him free when Gerry 
heard the motor noises of an airplane, descending. He 
gazed up and saw a German machine swooping a thou- 
sand feet above the ground. The pilot passed over them 
and, diving, came back five hundred feet lower; he took 
another look, circled and returned barely a hundred yards 


THE RESISTANCE 


173 


up. This time he would fire, Gerry knew ; and it was im- 
possible to find shield at the same time against the flying 
machine gun and the gun of the Jaegers. Gerry dragged 
his automatic from his holster and aimed, not with any 
hope of hitting the German machine, but merely to fire 
back when fired upon. But he could not twist himself far 
enough. 

“Give me the pistol, ,, he heard Cynthia say; and, as 
the German flyer came upon them with his machine gun 
jetting, he let her hand take the pistol; and while he lay 
enmeshed, helpless, he heard her firing. 

The machine-gun bullets from above splattered past 
them ; the pilot had overflown. The girl had emptied the 
magazine of Gerry’s pistol and she demanded of him more 
cartridges. He took his pistol ; reloaded it and now, when 
she reclaimed it, she crouched beside him and shot through 
a wooden strut and the wires which had been locking his 
legs in the wreckage. He pulled himself free. 

“ Now let’s get out of here ! ” he bid. 

“You’re all right?” she asked. 

He was testing his legs. “All right,” he assured. 

The Jaeger machine gunner had interrupted his fire; 
and the airplane, which had attacked, was far away at this 
moment. 

“ I heard you were about here, Cynthia,” Gerry said. 
“That’s why — when I had the chance — I came this 
way.” 

She made no reply as she watched the road to the rear 
upon which the refugees were appearing. A shell burst 
before them. 

“ I have to go to them ! ” Ruth cried. 


174 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“They’ll scatter; see; they’re doing it!” Gerry said, 
as the French ran separately through the fields till the 
rise of ground guarded them. “But we’d better skip 
now ! 

He had removed his maps from his machine ; warning 
her, he lit a match and ignited the wreckage. The flame, 
bursting from the gasoline, fed upon the varnished wing 
fabric, clouding up dense and heavy smoke which drifted 
with the breeze and screened them as they arose and, 
crouching, ran. The German machine gunner evidently 
looked upon the fire as the result of his shots and sus- 
pected no flight behind the smoke. The flyer, who had 
attacked, likewise seemed to see the fire as the result of 
his bullets. He turned away to other targets. 

Gerry got Ruth, unhurt, to the crest of the slope; they 
slipped over it and for the moment were safe. The car 
which Ruth had driven stood in the road. 


CHAPTER XII 


“how could this happen ? ” 

T HE French peasants, who had been fired upon and 
had gained the protection of the slope, gathered 
about them. 

“Beyond, also, the road is open to fire,” Gerry in- 
formed them in French; and he directed them to proceed 
in little groups and by the fields away from the road. 

“ Monsieur le Lieutenant is wounded,” an old man 
observed solicitously. 

“ Barely at all,” Gerry denied ; but swayed as he said so. 
“ Your car must go by the road,” Gerry said to Ruth. 
“You go with them in the fields; I will take it on for a 
bit.” 

He meant to relieve her for the run over the exposed 
stretch. He tried to step up to the driver’s seat ; but his 
leg would not bear his weight and he fell backward and 
would have gone to the ground had Ruth not caught him. 

“ That’s simply a knee twist from being bent under my 
ship,” he asserted. “That shrap hardly scratched me,” 
he referred to the red spot on his side where her fingers 
were feeling. 

“Help me lift Monsieur le Lieutenant,” Ruth bid the 
old peasant. Gerry tried again to climb alone ; but his leg 
had quite given away. As they lifted, he pulled himself 
into the seat and took the wheel. 


i75 


176 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“You need both feet for the pedals,” Ruth reminded 
him, simply; and he moved over without further protest 
and let her drive. The car was a covered Ford truck and 
Gerry, gazing back, saw an old French woman, a child, and 
two men, who had been injured, lying upon the bedding 
over the floor. The car was coming to the section of road 
which the German gunner had registered and Gerry 
turned about and watched Ruth while she drove. 

He had never seen her doing anything like this before ; 
and the sight of her small, white hands, so steady and 
firm on the wheel, her little, slender, booted feet upon the 
pedals sent a thrill tingling through him. He was a little 
dizzy for a moment and he closed his eyes, clutching to 
the side of his seat. A shell smashed twenty yards before 
them; parts of it hit the car. The shock of it startled 
Gerry up ; but the girl beside him was not hit nor fright- 
ened. Swiftly she swerved the car to dodge the hole in 
the road where the gravel was still slipping and settling; 
the next shell was behind and while they fled now, the 
shells all were behind and farther and farther back till 
they ceased. 

Ruth halted her car and waited for her charges to 
gather on the road; all of them appeared; none of them 
had been hurt. The damage done by the German fire 
totaled a front wheel much bent and the radiator ruined. 

“ We’ll have to run hot,” Ruth said. “ We can get on, 
if we go slowly.” 

Gerry attempted to get down to walk; but his twisted 
left knee would not bear him at all. His idea had been 
to return at once, somehow, to the battle, as soon as this 
girl who had come to him was in some sort of safety. 


HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN ” 


177 


He had planned wildly, to attempt to join the English 
fighting to the south of Mirevaux. He couldn’t do that 
now ; but, with strength enough in his leg to move a rud- 
der bar, he could fly and fight again as soon as he could 
procure another “ship.” The only way he could reach 
the rear and another airplane was to continue with these 
refugees and with this girl. 

It was strange that when he had been fighting and had 
been far from her, he had felt more strongly about her 
than he did now — more about her as a girl, that was, in 
relation to him as a man. He was close beside her with 
her body swaying against his when the car careened in 
the pits and ruts of the road. He kept observing her — 
the play of color in her smooth skin in the flush of her 
excitement, the steady, blue eyes alert upon the road, her 
full, red little lips pressing tight together after speaking 
with him and drawing tiny lines of strain at the corners 
of her mouth. He noticed pretty things about her which 
he had not before — the trimness of her ankles even under 
her heavy boots, the ease with which that slender, well- 
formed little body exerted its strength, the way her hair 
at her temples went into ringlets when effort and anxiety 
moistened her forehead. But he noticed these as though 
to remember them later ; his thought seemed to store them 
and save them for feeling at another time ; he was almost 
aware of going through an experience with her which 
could affect him, fully, only afterwards. In the same 
manner that subconsciously he had thought about her 
when all his conscious thought was absorbed in flying and 
fighting, now his eyes only observed her; his soul was 
blent in the battle. 


178 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


He and she, and the rest, were going back — back, 
kilometer after kilometer and yet encountering no strong 
force of English or French in position to hold that land; 
and he knew that if that depth of front was being aban- 
doned as far away to the right and as far away to the left 
as he could see, resistance must have broken down over a 
much greater front. Indeed, Gerry had himself observed 
from his airplane something of the length of the line 
where the allies were retreating; but he had not been 
able, when in the air, and passing in a few seconds over 
a kilometer, to feel the disaster as now he felt it in the 
swaying seat of the half-wrecked truck creeping along at 
the head of a column of refugees. This land which the 
Germans were again overrunning in a day was the strip 
which the English had freed the year before only through 
the long, murderous months of the “ blood baths” of the 
Somme. 

“ Do you remember an English officer on the Ribot 
Ruth was asking of him, “ whom I called 4 1582 ? ’ ” 

“ He’s about here ? ” Gerry inquired. 

“No; but several of his sort are — one particularly, a 
Lieutenant Haddon-Staples ; I called him, to myself, 
‘1583.’” 

“What do you think of his sort now?” Gerry asked, 
confidently. 

Ruth’s eyes filled suddenly so that she had to raise a 
hand from the driving-wheel to dash away the wetness 
which blurred the road. 

“ They’re the most wonderful sportsmen in the world ! ” 
Ruth said. “They don’t care about odds against them; 
or at least they don’t complain. Oh, that’s not the word ; 


“ HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN 


179 


complaint is about as far from their attitude as anything 
you can think of.” 

“ I know,” Gerry said. 

“They don’t even — criticize. They just accept the 
odds, whatever they are; and go in with all of themselves 
as though they had a chance to hold and win and come 
out alive ! They know they haven’t ; but you’d never guess 
it from them; and there’s none of that ‘We who are 
about to die salute you’ idea in them either. They’re 
sportsmen and gentlemen ! ” 

“ I know how they make you feel,” Gerry said, watch- 
ing her keenly again; the road thereabouts was bad and 
she couldn’t even glance around to him. “Rather, you 
know now how they made me feel, I think.” 

She made no reply; so he went on. “If they’d say 
things out to us; if they had criticized us and damned us 
and told us we were lying down behind them, it wouldn’t 
be so rotten hard to see them. But they don’t. They 
just go in as you say; they feel they’ve a fight on which 
is their fight and they’re going to fight it whether anyone 
else thinks it worth while to fight it or not or whether 
they have any chance for winning.” 

Ruth winked swiftly again to clear her eyes; and 
Gerry, watching her, wondered what particular experi- 
ence his general praise had called up. He did not ask; 
but she told him. 

“‘ 1583’ was just that sort of man, Gerry,” she said, 
using his name for the first time as simply as he had 
spoken hers when she had crouched behind the shield of 
his engine with him. 

“He’s killed?” Gerry asked. 


180 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“I don’t know; but it’s certain — yes, he’s killed,” she 
replied. 

“You — cared for him, Cynthia?” 

“He was about here — I mean about Mirevaux — as 
long as I’ve been. That was only two weeks — ‘a fort- 
night,’ as he’d say in his funny, English way — but now 
it seems ” 

“ I know,” Gerry said. 

“ He was with his battalion which was lying in reserve. 
He and some of the others didn’t have a lot to do evenings 
so they’d drop in pretty often at the cottage Mrs. Mayhew 
and I had where there was one of those little, portable 
organs with three octaves and we’d play their songs some- 
times and ours — like Good King Wenceslaus and Clem- 
entine.” 

“Did you play?” Gerry interrupted. 

“Sometimes; and sometimes he would; and we’d all 
sing, 

In the cabin , in the canon , 

Excavating for a mine; 

Dwelt a miner , forty-niner — 

All the English liked that sort best with Wait for the 
Wagon , you know.” 

“Yes.” 

It was a minute or two before she continued; she was 
speaking of evenings none of them older than two weeks 
and one of them only the night before last; but they 
formed part of an experience irrevocable now and of an 
epoch past. 

“ They knew pretty well what was going to happen to 


“ HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN 


181 


them — that they would have to be thrown in some day 
without a chance. But they talked about coming to 
America after the war — the mining camps of Nevada 
and California, the Grand Canon, Niagara Falls, and 
Mammoth Cave appealed to them, particularly. I asked 
4 1583’ once — I knew him best,” Ruth said; and when 
she repeated the nickname for him it was with the wistful 
fondness with which only such a name may be said, “ if 
he didn’t want to go back home to England and Suffolk- 
shire after the war. He said, ‘I’m eager to stay a bit 
with the pater and the mater, naturally.’ ” She was imi- 
tating his voice ; and Gerry saw that it made her cry ; but 
she went on. “ ‘ But I can’t stay there, you know.’ 

“I asked, why. 

“‘My friends,’ he said. ‘I’ve not one now. You 
fancy you’re attached to a place; but you find, you know, 
you’ve cared for more than that.’ Then he changed the 
subject the way the English always do when you come to 
something they feel. He was with me the evening this 
battle began; and he knew what was coming. I didn’t 
see him again till this morning — early this morning,” she 
repeated as though unable to believe the shortness of the 
time. “ He rode over to warn us ; and then, a little later 
when I was getting my first party of people out of Mire- 
vaux, I passed him with some more men just like him 
going to the firing. He knew he was going to be killed 
for he’d told us the Germans had broken through; and 
we couldn’t hold them. But he wasn’t thinking about that 
when he saw me. He just watched me as I was working 
to get my people in order and, as he rode past, he called 
out, ‘ Good old America ! ’ That to me — one girl getting 


182 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


peasants out of a village while he and his handful of 
soldiers were going — there!” Ruth gestured back 
toward the battle. “ Oh, I wanted to be a million men for 
him — for them! ‘Good old America!’ he said. I saw 
him, or men whom I think he was with, holding a hill a 
couple of miles* east an hour later; they were one to ten 
or one to twenty; I don’t know what the odds were 
against them; but they stayed on top of that hill. I tell 
you I saw them — stay on top of that hill.” 

“I know,” Gerry said. “I’ve seen them stay on top 
of a hill. I know how it is to want to be, for them, a 
million men ! ” 

Ruth’s hands on the steering-wheel went bloodless from 
pressure. “Our million is coming; thank God, it’s com- 
ing! And I believe — I must believe that somehow it 
still is right and best that we couldn’t come before.” She 
gazed back over the land where the Germans were 
advancing; and where the English soldiers were “stay- 
ing.” 

“How could this happen, this break-through?” she 
asked. “It wasn’t just superior numbers; they’ve had 
that and, at other times, we’ve had superiority before; 
but no one ever advanced like this.” 

“They showed an entirely new attack,” Gerry said. 
“New infantry formation; new arms — infantry can- 
non ; then there was the mist. And our intelligence people 
must have fallen down, too, while theirs gave them every- 
thing they wanted. We didn’t know at all what they were 
going to do, but they must have known everything about 
our strength, or lack of strength, here.” 

He saw her hands whiten again with their grasp of the 


HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN 


183 


wheel and the little lines deepen under her tight-drawn 
lips. She had stiffened as though he had accused her; 
and while he was wondering why, she glanced up at him. 

“Then part of this — ” her gaze had gone again to the 
fields being abandoned — “is my fault, Gerry/’ 

That was all she said ; but instantly he thought of her 
accusation of De Trevenac and what she had told him in 
the little parlor on the Rue des Saints Peres ; and he was 
so certain that she was thinking of it also that he asked : 

“You mean you didn’t tell me all you knew about De 
Trevenac?” 

“No; I told you everything I knew! Oh, I wouldn’t 
have held back any of that. I mean, I haven’t done all I 
might ; you see, I never imagined anything like this could 
happen.” 

“What might you have done, Cynthia?” he asked. 
He had said to her that time in the parlor on the Rue des 
Saints Peres that she had come to do more than mere 
relief work; but he had not consistently thought of her 
as engaged in that more daring work against which he had 
warned her. 

“ I got so wrapt up in the work at Mirevaux,” she said, 
avoiding direct answer. “ I thought it was all right to let 
myself just do that for a while.” 

“Whereas?” he challenged. 

She leaned forward and turned the ignition switch, 
stopping the motor which had been laboring and grind- 
ing grievously. “It must cool off,” she said, leaping 
down upon the ground. She went about to the back of 
the truck and Gerry heard her speaking in French to the 
passengers behind him. 


184 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“Grand’mere Bergues,” she said when she returned 
beside Gerry, “lost for a moment her twig of the tree. 
I had to find it for her.” 

“Her twig of what tree?” Gerry asked. 

“ I forgot you didn’t know,” and Ruth told him of 
Grand’mere Bergues’ tree. “When I convinced her at 
last,” Ruth added, “that the Boche had broken through 
and were coming again, she had a stroke; but even so 
she would not let us carry her until I had brought her a 
twig of the tree — a twig which was green, and budding, 
and had sap, though last year the Boche called that tree 
destroyed. That now must be her triumph.” 

Ruth restarted the motor and, when they proceeded, 
Gerry sat without inquiring again of what dangerous, 
indefinite business this girl was going to do. While he 
watched her driving, a queer, pulling sensation pulsed in 
his breast; it associated itself with a vision of a young 
Englishman, who now undoubtedly was dead, standing 
behind this girl while she played a little organ with three 
octaves and they all sang. This was not jealousy, exactly ; 
it was simply recognition of a sort of fellowship which 
she could share which he would have liked to have dis- 
covered himself. It suggested not something more than 
he had had with Agnes Ertyle ; but something quite dif- 
ferent and which he liked. He tried to imagine Agnes 
playing, and singing Clementine, and Wait for the 
Wagon; and — he couldn’t. He tried to imagine her cry- 
ing because someone had called to her, “Good old 
England”; and he couldn’t. Agnes cried over some 
things — children who were brought to her and badly 
wounded boys who died. But Agnes could have told him 


HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN 


185 


all that Cynthia had without any emotion at all. Agnes 
would have told it quite differently, of course. 

They were coming in sight of a flying field. “Let 
me off here, please,” Gerry asked when they were 
opposite it. 

When Ruth stopped the car Gerry called for one of the 
old Frenchmen to give him a shoulder and he stepped 
down. “ You don’t need much leg muscle to fly,” he 
assured Ruth when she observed him anxiously. “ If I 
can’t steal a ship over there, at least they’ll take care of 
me.” He hesitated, looking up at her, unable simply to 
thank her for what she had done. 

“ Where are you going? ” he asked. During their drive 
they had discussed various destinations for their party; 
but could decide upon none. The final halting place must 
depend upon the military situation, and nothing was 
more unsettled than that. But Gerry was not referring 
now to the halting place of the whole party; he knew 
that during the last minutes she had formed determina- 
tions which would take her as soon as possible to her other 
tasks; and she accepted that in her answer. 

“I’m going to Montdidier — unless it seems better to 
make for Amiens; then to Paris as soon as I can.” 

“I see.” He gazed away and up in the air where 
machines with the tri-color circle of the allies were flying; 
and hastily he offered Ruth his hand. “ Good-bye, 
Cynthia,” he said. 

“Good-bye, Gerry.” 

“Cynthia, when you’re in Paris you’ll stay there?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“If you do, where’ll you be?” 


186 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“Milicent’s kept our room in the pension on the Rue 
des Saints Peres. I’ll be with her again, I think.” 

“All right! Look out for yourself ! ” 

“You try to, too! ” 

She kept the car standing a few seconds longer watch- 
ing him while, with his arm about the old man’s shoulder, 
he hobbled toward the flying field. Several minutes later, 
when she was far down the road, she gazed back, and saw 
a combat biplane rise from the field with what seemed to 
be particular impatience, and she imagined that he was 
piloting that machine. She had passed now from the 
zone of the broken front, where all the effort was to throw 
men — any number and any sort of men — across the 
path of the victorious German advance to the region of 
retreat, where every sinew and every sense was strained 
in the attempt to get men, and guns, and supplies out of 
the area of envelopment by the enemy. And dreadful and 
appalling as it had been to witness men — too few men 
and unsupported — moving forward to immolate them- 
selves in hopeless effort to stay that German advance, 
yet it had not been so terrible to Ruth as this sight and 
sound of retreat. For the sound — the beat of feet upon 
the road, the ceaseless tramp of retreating men, the rum- 
ble of guns and combat trains going back, then the beat, 
beat, beat of the retreat — continued into the darkness, 
when Ruth no longer could see the road from the little 
house where she rested. All through the night it con- 
tinued till it seemed to Ruth, not something human, 
but a cataclysm of nature flowing before a more 
mighty catastrophe which no one and nothing could 
stop. 


HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN 


187 


Whenever she awoke she heard it; and through the 
dreams which harassed the heavy periods of her stupor 
of exhaustion which served that night for sleep, that beat 
of the feet throbbed and throbbed. 

Ruth reached Montdidier at noon of the next day. It 
was at Montdidier, accordingly, that she first learned the 
true magnitude of the disaster and first heard openly 
spoken what had been said only in part before; and that 
was that the fate of France and of the allied cause 
depended now upon the Americans. If they could not 
quickly arrive in great force and if, having arrived, they 
proved unable to fight on even terms with the Germans, 
all was lost. France would not yet give up, in any case; 
England would hold on ; but, without America, they were 
beaten. 

And during that day, and through the next, and the 
next, while Ruth was unable to leave Montdidier, the dis- 
aster grew until it was known that the British Fifth Army, 
as an organized force, had ceased to exist and the Ger- 
mans, in this single great stroke, had advanced thirty-five 
miles and claimed the capture of thirteen hundred guns 
and ninety thousand men. 

On Monday, as the Germans yet advanced and moved 
on Montdidier, Ruth was in a column of refugees again; 
she was obliged to abandon her determined task for the 
duty of the moment offered to her hands. She got to 
Compiegne and there was delayed. Roye, Noyon, Mont- 
didier all now were taken; and the wounded from that 
southern flank of the salient which thrust west toward 
Amiens were coming back upon Compiegne ; and no man 
yet could say that the disaster was halted. 


188 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


But Foch had come to the command. 

Ruth had tried to learn from men who had returned 
from the region where she had left Gerry Hull, what his 
fate might have been. She knew that he had been flying 
and fighting again, for she read in one of the bulletins 
which was being issued, that he had been cited in the 
orders of the day for Monday; but she learned nothing 
at all about him after that until the day after the announce- 
ment that all allied armies were to be under the supreme 
command of General Foch. It was Friday, eight days 
after that first Thursday morning of mist, and surprise, 
and catastrophe; and still the Germans fought their way 
forward; but for two days now the French had arrived, 
and were present in force from Noyon to Moreuil, and 
for two days the gap between the British and the French, 
which the German break-through had opened, had been 
closed. 

Gerry upon that day was detailed with a squadron 
whose airdrome had been moved beyond Ribecourt; he 
had been flying daily, and had fought an engagement 
that morning, and after returning from his afternoon 
reconnaissance over Noyon he had been ordered to rest, 
as the situation was becoming sufficiently stabilized to 
end the long strain of his too constant flights. Accord- 
ingly, he left late in the afternoon for Compiegne to look 
for the field hospital where Agnes Ertyle would be at 
work. The original site of her tents had been far within 
the zone which the Germans had retaken ; and Gerry had 
heard that she had done wonders during the moving of the 
wounded. 

He found her on duty, as he knew she would be ; she 


HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN 


189 


was a trifle thinner than before, perhaps; her cool, firm 
hand clasped his just a bit tensely; her calm, observant 
eyes were slightly brighter ; but she was in complete con- 
trol of herself, as she always was, quite unconfused — 
even when two nurses came at the same time for emergency 
directions — and quite efficient. 

After a while she was able to give him a little time 
alone ; and they sat in a tent and talked. Gerry had not 
seen her or heard from her since the beginning of the 
battle, and he found her almost overwhelmed with the 
completeness of the British defeat and the destruction of 
the Fifth Army. She herself knew and her father, who 
was dead, had been a close friend of the commanding 
officers who were held responsible for the disaster; and 
together with the shock of the defeat, went sympathy for 
them. They were being removed ; and even the English 
commander-in-chief no longer had supreme command of 
his own men. 

“It’s the greatest thing the allies have yet done — one 
command,” Gerry said. “ We ought to have had it long 
ago; if we had, the Boche never would have done what 
they just have. When you had your own army and your 
own command, and the French had theirs, you each kept 
your own reserve; and, of course, Ludendorf knew it. 
Haig expected an attack upon his part of the front, so 
he had to keep his reserve to himself on his part of the 
line to be ready for it; the French looked for an attack 
on their sectors, so they kept their reserves to themselves ; 
so wherever Ludendorf struck with all his reserves, he 
knew he’d meet only half of ours and that it would take 
five days— -as it did — for the other half to come up. 


190 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


Now one commander-in-chief, like Foch, can stop all 
that.” 

“I can believe it was necessary and, therefore, best,” 
Lady Agnes said. “ Yet I can’t stop being sorry — not 
merely for our general officers, but for our men, too. 
Poor chaps who come to me ; they’ve fought so finely 
for England; and now the Boche are boasting they’ve 
whipped them and beaten England. They everyone of 
them are so eager to get well, and go back, and have at 
them again, and rather show the Boche that they’ve not — 
rather show them that England will have them! Now 
we’ll not be under our own command ; yet we’ll be fight- 
ing just the same for England; the Boche shall find that 
England will have them ! ” 

“ You’ll have them ! ” Gerry assured. “And far quicker 
than you could have before.” 

Lady Agnes observed him, a little puzzled. “ You used 
to say ‘ we ’ when you spoke of us,” she said gently. 

Gerry flushed. “ I was in your army then,” he replied. 

“You’re fighting with us now — wonderfully, Gerry.” 

“ Yes ; but technically you see, Agnes, I’m with my own 
forces.” 

He said “my own” with a tone of distinction which 
surprised himself. His own forces, except for a few 
comrade pilots, and for those engineers who had grabbed 
rifles, and got into this battle, and except for those girls — 
those “awfully good” girls of Picardy — still were only 
in training in France or holding down quiet sectors in 
Lorraine. But Gerry had been in one of those sectors 
which had not been so noted for its tranquillity after “ his 
own” forces had arrived. 


HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN 


191 


However, he was not thinking of those forces just 
then; he was recalling an American girl who had come 
to him across open ground in the sunlight and under 
machine-gun fire. For a moment he visualized her as she 
stumbled and rolled forward, when he thought she was 
hit ; then he saw her close beside him with the sun on her 
glorious hair and her eyes all anxious for him. Words 
of hers came to him when Lady Agnes was speaking again 
her regret that the English could not have kept their own 
command. 

“ Oh, I don’t know how to say it ! ” that American girl’s 
words repeated themselves to Gerry ; she was in a yellow 
dress now, with bare arms and neck, and quite warm and 
flushed with her intentness to explain to him something 
he could not understand at all. “ But at first France was 
fighting as France and for France against Germany; and 
England, for England, was doing the same. And America 
couldn’t do that — I mean fight for America. She couldn’t 
join with allies who were fighting for themselves, or even 
for each other. The side of the allies had to become 
more than that before we could go in; and it is and 
we’re in ! ” 

Gerry was understanding that better, now. This unifi- 
cation of the command, and the yielding of the British 
was their greatest earnest of that change which Cynthia 
Gail had felt before, and gloried in, and which Agnes 
Ertyle accepted but yet deplored. 

More wounded came streaming back from the battle 
and Lady Agnes returned to duty immediately. “ That 
Miss Gail, who was on the Ribot with us, was in Com- 
piegne the other day,” Agnes told him when he was say- 


192 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


ing good-bye. “ She’s doing marvels in sorting out refu- 
gees, I hear.” 

Gerry had been wondering often during the last days 
about what might have happened to Cynthia ; and he had 
inquired of several people. But he had not thought that 
Lady Agnes might know. 

“ She was working at a relief headquarters on Rue 
Solferino, near the Place de l’Hotel de Ville.” 

Gerry wandered into Compiegne, finding the Rue Sol- 
ferino, which was the main street of the city, more 
crowded and congested than ever before. From the 
throng before the doors, Gerry quickly located the quar- 
ters near the Hotel de Ville where Cynthia Gail had been 
working and, forcing a way in, he spied a yellow head 
bent over a little boy and he heard a gentle, sweet voice 
speaking, in newly learned French, interrogations about 
where the child last had seen his mother, whether he had 
aunt or uncle and so on. Gerry went farther in and made 
himself known; and when the girl looked up and saw 
him, an older American woman — Mrs. Mayhew — 
looked up, and she observed not only Gerry but the girl 
also. 

“ Hello,” Ruth said. It was a poor word to encompass 
all she was feeling at that moment, which was, first, joy 
and relief that he was safe; next, that he had come 
there to seek her. But the word did, as it many, many 
times had done before; and he used the same to 
encompass what he felt. “Have you had anything 
to eat tonight?” he added after his greeting. He sus- 
pected not. 

“I’ll have supper later, thanks,” Ruth said. 


“ HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN 


193 


“ You will not,” Mrs. Mayhew put in. “ You can come 
back after supper, if you must; but you go out now. 
Take her with you, Gerry.” 

Which was a command which Gerry obeyed. So they 
sat together at a little table in a cafe, much crowded, and 
very noisy, and where they supped in haste; for there 
was a great multitude to be served. But they were very 
light-hearted. 

“ You've heard the great news about our army ? ” Ruth 
asked. 

“ That we're going to be under the command of Gen- 
eral Foch like the English?” 

“ Better than that,” Ruth said. “ General Pershing has 
offered all our forces to the French to use in any way 
they wish. He’s offered to break up our brigades, or even 
our regiments and companies, and let the French and 
English brigade our regiments with them, or take our 
men as individuals into their ranks, or use us any way 
they want, which will help to win. They're not to think 
about us — our pride — at all. They’re just to take us — 
in any way to help.” 

“No,” said Gerry. “I hadn’t heard that.” 

“ It's just announced,” Ruth told him. “ I'd just heard. 
He did it under the instructions and with the approval of 
our government. I think — I think it’s the finest, most 
unselfish offer a nation ever made ! All we have in any 
way that’s best for the cause ! ” 

Gerry sat back while hot rills of prickling blood tingled 
to his temples. “ I think so, too, Cynthia,” he said. And 
again that evening words of hers, spoken long ago, seized 
him. “Oh, I don't know how or when it will appear; 


194 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


but I know that before long you will be prouder to be an 
American than you ever dreamed you could be ! ” 

Part of that pride was coming to him, then, incredible 
as it would have seemed to him even a few days ago, 
when in the midst of disaster unparalleled and due to 
the tardiness of his country. For, though his country 
had not come in till so late, now it was offering itself in a 
spirit unknown in national relations before. 

When they had finished their supper, he brought her 
back to her work and himself returned to his airdrome. 
The next day Ruth found a chance to journey to Paris. 

For information — accurate, dependable word of Ger- 
man intentions and German preparations for the next 
attack — was the paramount essential now. This first 
assault at last was stopped; but only after tremendous 
catastrophe; and the Germans still possessed superiority 
in physical strength as great as before. And they owned, 
even more than before, confidence in themselves, while 
the allies’ at least had been shaken. The Germans kept 
also, undoubtedly, the same powers of secrecy which had 
enabled them to launch their tremendous onslaught as a 
surprise to the allies, while they themselves accurately had 
reckoned the allied strength and dispositions. 

Ruth did not hope, by herself, to change all that. The 
wild dreams of the girl who had taken up the bold enter- 
prise offered her in Chicago, had become tempered by 
experience, which let her know the limits within which 
one person might work in this war; but the probability 
that she would be unable to do greatly only increased her 
will to do whatever she could. 

Thus she returned to Paris to endeavor to encounter 


HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN 


195 


again the enemy agents who would send her through 
Switzerland into Germany. As she knew nothing of 
them, she must depend upon their seeking her; so she 
went at once to her old room in the pension upon the Rue 
des Saints Peres. Arriving late in the afternoon, she 
found Milicent home from work — a Milicent who put 
arms about her and cried over her in relief that she was 
safe. Then Milicent brought her a cablegram. 

“This came while you were gone, dear. I opened it 
and tried to forward it to you.” 

Ruth went white and her heart halted with fear. Had 
something happened at home — to her mother or to her 
sisters ? 

“What is it?” 

“Your brother’s badly wounded. He’s here in a hos- 
pital, Cynthia!” 

“My brother!” Ruth cried. It had come to her as 
Cynthia Gail, of course. She had thought, when nearing 
the pension, that probably she would find an accumulation 
of mail to which, as Cynthia, she must reply. ' But she 
had been Cynthia so long now that she had almost ceased 
to fear an emergency. Her brother, of course, was 
Charles Gail, who had quarreled with his father and of 
whom nothing had been heard for four years. 

Ruth took the message and learned that Charles had 
been with the Canadians since the start of the war; he had 
enlisted under an assumed name ; but when wounded and 
brought to Paris, he had given his real name and asked 
that his parents be informed. The information had 
reached them ; so his father had cabled Cynthia to try to 
see Charles before he died. 


196 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“I told Lieutenant Byrne about it,” Milicent said to 
Ruth. 

“Lieutenant Byrne?” 

“Why, yes; wasn’t that right? He called here for 
you last week; and several times since. He said he was 
engaged to you; why — isn’t he?” 

“Yes, he was. That’s all right,” Ruth said. 

“ So he’s been about to see your brother.” 

“ How is he? Charles, I mean, of course.” 

“ He was still living yesterday.” 

“Lieutenant Byrne is still here?” 

“As far as I know, he is.” 


CHAPTER XIII 


BYRNE ARRIVES 

R UTH turned, without asking more, and went into 
the room which had been hers, and shut herself in 
alone. She dared not inquire anything further, or permit 
anything more to be asked of her; she dared not let 
Milicent see her until she had time to think. 

Milicent and she long ago had given to one another 
those intimate confidences about their personal affairs 
which girls, who share the same rooms, usually exchange; 
but Ruth's confidences, of course, had detailed the family 
situation of Cynthia Gail. Accordingly, Ruth knew that 
Milicent had believed that the boy, whose picture was the 
third in the portfolio of Cynthia’s family, which Ruth 
always had kept upon the dresser, was Ruth’s brother. 
Milicent would believe, therefore, that it was this sudden 
discovery of her brother dying in a Paris hospital which 
had shocked Ruth into need for being alone just now. 

Indeed, feeling for that boy, whose picture she had 
carried for so long, and about whom she had written so 
many times to his parents, and who was mentioned in 
some loving manner in almost everyone of those letters 
which Ruth had received from Decatur, had its part in 
the tumult of sensations oversweeping her. But dominant 
in that tumult was the knowledge that his discovery — 
and, even more certainly, the arrival of George Byrne — 
197 


198 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


meant extinction of Ruth as Cynthia Gail ; meant annihila- 
tion of her projects and her plans; meant, perhaps, 
destruction of her even as Ruth Alden. 

Ruth had not ceased to realize, during the tremendous 
events of these last weeks, that at any moment someone 
might appear to betray her ; and she had kept some calcu- 
lation of the probable consequence. When she had first 
embraced this wild enterprise, which fate had seemed to 
proffer, she had entered upon considerable risks; if 
caught, she would have the difficult burden of proof, when 
she was taking the enemy’s money and using a passport 
supplied by the enemy and following — outwardly, at 
least — the enemy’s instructions, that she was not actually 
acting for the enemy. But if she had been betrayed dur- 
ing the first days, it would have been possible to show how 
the true Cynthia Gail met her death and to show that she 
— Ruth Alden — could have had no hand in that. But 
now more than two months had passed since that day in 
Chicago when Ruth Alden took on her present identity — 
more than two months since the body of Cynthia Gail, still 
unrecognized, must have been cremated or laid away in 
some nameless grave. Therefore, the former possibility 
no longer existed. 

Horror at her position, if she suddenly faced one of 
Cynthia Gail’s family, sometimes startled Ruth up wide- 
awake in bed at night. She had not been able to think 
what to do in such case as that; her mind had simply 
balked before it; and every added week with its letters 
subscribed by those forged “ Thias ” to Cynthia’s father, 
and those intimate endearments to Cynthia’s mother, and 
those letters about love to George Byrne — well, every 


BYRNE ARRIVES 


199 


day had made it more and more impossible to prepare for 
the sometime inevitable confession. 

For confession to Cynthia’s family must come if Ruth 
lived; but only— she prayed — after the war and after 
she had done such service that Cynthia’s people could at 
least partially understand why she had tricked them. The 
best end of all, perhaps — and perhaps the most probable 
— was that Ruth should be killed; she would die, then, 
as Cynthia, and no one would challenge the dead. That 
was how Ruth dismissed the matter when the terror 
within clamored for answer. But she could not so dis- 
miss it now. 

Impulse seized her to flee and to hide. But, in the 
France of the war, she could not easily do that; nor could 
she slip off from Cynthia’s identity and name without 
complete disaster. Anywhere she went — even if she 
desired to take lodgings in a different zone in Paris, or 
indeed if she was to dwell elsewhere in the same zone — 
she must present Cynthia’s passport and continue as 
Cynthia. And other, and more conclusive reasons, con- 
trolled her. 

Her sole justification for having become Cynthia Gail 
was her belief that she could go into Germany by aid of 
the German agents who would know her as Cynthia Gail. 
They could find her only if she went about Cynthia Gail’s 
work and lived at the lodgings here. 

Ruth was getting herself together during these moments 
of realization. She opened the bedroom door and called 
in Milicent. 

Charles Gail had been gassed. Milicent had not seen 
him, but Lieutenant Byrne had visited him and repeated 


200 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


to Milicent that he was not sure whether Charles knew 
him. Ruth scarcely could bear thought of visiting Charles 
Gail and pretending that she was Cynthia; but it was evi- 
dent that he was so weak that he would suspect nothing. 

The chance of George Byrne betraying her was greater. 
He had been in Paris, Milicent said, upon some special 
duty of indefinite duration. Every time he had called he 
had left messages with Milicent and had assumed that he 
might not be able to return to the Rue des Saints Peres. 

“ He was here the day we got the news that Mirevaux 
was taken/’ Milicent said. “We tried in every way to 
get word of you. He was almost crazy, dear. He loves 
you ; don’t you ever doubt that ! ” 

Ruth made no reply, though Milicent waited, watching 
her. 

“ I didn’t say anything to him about Gerry Hull, dear.” 

“I’ve written him about meeting Gerry,” Ruth said, 
simply. “ I’ll start for the hospital now, Mil.” 

“ You’ll let me go with you, Cynthia? ” 

“Thanks; but it’s not — I think I’d rather not.” 

Milicent gazed at her, a little surprised and hurt, but 
she made no further offer. 

Ruth went out on the Rue des Saints Peres alone; a 
start of panic seized her as she gazed up and down the 
little street — panic that from a neighboring doorway, or 
about one of the corners, George Byrne might suddenly 
appear and speak to her. 

The late spring afternoon was clear and warm; and 
that part of Paris was quiet, when from Ruth’s right and 
ahead of her came the resound and the concussion of a 
heavy explosion. Ruth gazed up, instinctively, to find the 


BYRNE ARRIVES 


201 


German airplane from which a torpedo might have 
dropped; but she saw only the faint, dragon-fly forms of 
the French sentinel machines which constantly stood guard 
over Paris. They circled and spun in and out monoto- 
nously, as usual, and undisturbed at their watch; and, 
with a start, Ruth suddenly remembered. From beyond 
the German lines in the forest of Saint Gobain, 
Paris was being bombarded by some new mon- 
ster of Krupp’s ; the explosion where a haze of debris dust 
was hanging over the roofs a half mile or more away had 
been the burst of a shell from that gun. Since the start of 
the German assault the Germans had been sending these 
random shells to strike and kill at every half hour for sev- 
eral hours upon almost every day. So Paris had learned 
to recognize them ; Paris had become accustomed to them ; 
Parisians shrugged when they struck. But Ruth did not. 

The studied brutality of that German gun, more than 
sixty miles away, dispatching its unaimed shells to do 
methodical, indiscriminate murder in the city, was the sort 
of thing Ruth needed at that moment to steady her to 
what lay before her. She was setting herself to this, as to 
the rest, to help stop forever deeds like the firing of that 
gun. She hastened on more resolutely; the gun fired 
again, its monstrous, random shell falling in quite another 
quarter. Presenting herself at the doors of the hospital, 
she ascertained that Sergeant Charles Gail, who had 
originally been enrolled in a Canadian battalion under 
another name, was still living. Consultation with a nurse 
evoked the further information that he was conscious at 
the present minute, but desperately weak; he had been 
asking many times for his friends or word of his people; 


202 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


it was therefore permissible — indeed, it was desirable — 
that his sister see him. 

Ruth followed the nurse between the long rows of beds 
where boys and men lay until the nurse halted beside a 
boy whose wide-open eyes gazed up, unmoving, at the 
ceiling; he was very thin and yellow, but his brows yet 
held some of the boldness, in the set of his chin was still 
some of the high spirit of defiance of the picture in the 
portfolio — the boy who had quarreled with his father 
four years ago and who had run away to the war. 

“Here is your sister,” the nurse told him gently in 
French. 

“My sister?” he repeated the French words while his 
eyes sought and found Ruth. A tinge of color came to 
his cheek; with an effort a hand lifted from the coverlet. 

“Hello, Cynth,” he said. “They said — you were — 
here.” 

Ruth bent and kissed his forehead. “All right, Cynth,” 
he murmured when she withdrew a little. “You can do 
that again.” 

Ruth did it again and sat down beside him. His hand 
was in hers; and whenever she relaxed her tight grasp of 
it he stirred impatiently. He did not know she was not 
his sister. His eyes rested upon hers, but vacantly; he 
was too exhausted to observe critically; his sister had 
come, they said; and if she was not exactly as he remem- 
bered her, why he had not seen her for four years ; a great 
deal had happened to her, and even more had happened 
to him. Her lips were soft and warm as his sister’s always 
had been ; her hands were very gentle, and it was awfully 
good to have her there. 


BYRNE ARRIVES 


203 


Ruth was full of joy that she had dared to come; for 
she was, to this boy, his sister. 

“Tell me — about — home,” he begged her. 

“I’ve brought all my letters,” she said; and opening 
them with one hand — for he would not have her lose 
grasp of him — she read the home news until the nurse 
returned and, nodding, let Ruth know she must go. 

He could not follow in his mind the simple events 
related in the letters; but he liked to hear the sentences 
about home objects, and the names of the people he had 
loved, and who loved him. 

“You’ll — come back — tomorrow, Cynth?” he 
pleaded. 

Ruth promised and kissed him again and departed. 

It was quite dark now on the streets with only the sound 
of the evening bustle. The long-range German gun had 
ceased firing; but the dim lights beside doorways proved 
that on this clear, still night the people of Paris realized 
the danger of air raids. Ruth was hurrying along, think- 
ing of the boy she had left and of his comrades in the long 
rows of beds; from them her thoughts flew back to the 
battle, to “1583” and his English on the hill, to 
Grand’mere Bergues* farm, and to Gerry Hull; she 
thought of the German soldiers she had seen with him and 
of her errand to their land. Almost before she realized 
it, she was turning into the little street of the Holy Fath- 
ers when a man, approaching out of the shadows, suddenly 
halted before her and cried out : 

“Cynthia!” 

The glow of light was behind him, so she could not 
make out his face ; but she knew that only one stranger, 


204 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


recognizing her as Cynthia, could have cried out to her 
like that; so she spoke his name instantly, instinctively, 
before she thought. 

Her voice either was like Cynthia’s or, in his rush of feel- 
ing, George Byrne did not notice a difference. He had come 
before her and was seizing her hands; his fingers, after 
their first grasp, moved up her arms. “ Cynthia ; my own 
Cynthia,” he murmured her name. At first he had held 
her in the glow of the light the better to see her ; but now 
he carried her back with him into the shadow; and his 
arms were around her ; he was crushing her against him, 
kissing her lips, her cheeks, her lips again, her hands from 
which he stripped the gloves. 

She strained to compress her repulse of him. He was 
not rough nor sensuous ; he simply was possessing himself 
of her in full passion of love. If she were Cynthia, who 
loved this man, she would have clung in his embrace in 
the abandonment of joy. Ruth tried to think of that and 
control herself not to repel him; but she could not. 
Reflexes, beyond her obedience, opposed him. 

Ever since Milicent had informed her that he was in 
Paris, Ruth had been forming plans for every contingency 
of their meeting; but this encounter had introduced ele- 
ments different from any expectations. If this visit to 
the street of the Holy Fathers was to be his last one before 
leaving Paris, then perhaps she had better keep him out 
upon the street in the dark and play at being Cynthia 
until she could dismiss him. She must feel — or at least 
she must betray— no recoil of outrage at his taking her 
into his arms. He had had that right with Cynthia Gail. 
Though he and Cynthia had quarreled — and Ruth had 


BYRNE ARRIVES 


205 


never mended that quarrel — yet Cynthia and he had 
loved. Too much had passed between them to put them 
finally apart. And now, as Ruth felt his arms enfolding 
her, his lips on hers, and his breath whispering to her his 
passionate love, she knew that Cynthia could not have 
forbidden this. 

He took Ruth’s struggle as meant to tempt his strength 
and he laughed joyously as, very gently, he overpowered 
her. She tried to cease to struggle ; she tried to laugh as 
Cynthia would have laughed; but she could not. 
“ Don’t ! ” she found herself resisting. “ Don’t ! ” 

“ Oh ! I hurt you, dearest? ” 

“Yes,” she said; though he had not. And remorse- 
fully and with anxious endearments, he let her go. 

“You’ve heard about Charles?” he asked. 

“I’ve just come from him.” 

“He’s — the same?” 

“Yes.” 

She stood gasping against the wall of a building, 
entirely in the shadow herself, with the little light which 
reached them showing her his face. Ruth liked that face ; 
and she liked the girl whom she played at being — that 
Cynthia whose identity she was carrying on, but about 
whom she yet knew so little — for having loved this man. 
George Byrne had been clean-living; he was strong and 
eager, but gentle, too. He had high thoughts and resolute 
ideals. These he had told her in those letters which had 
come ; but Ruth had not embodied them in him till now. 
She was recovering from the offense of having anyone’s 
arms but Gerry’s about her. She was not conscious of 
thinking of Gerry that way; only, his arms had been 


206 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


about her, he had held her; and, because of that, what 
she had just undergone had been more difficult to bear. 

“ I love you ; you love me, Cynthia ? ” Byrne was beg- 
ging of her now. 

“Of course I do,” she said. 

“There’s not someone else, then? Tell me, Cynthia! ” 

“No — no one else,” she breathed. What could she 
say? She was not speaking for herself ; but for Cynthia; 
and now she was absolutely sure that, for Cynthia, there 
could have been no one else. But she could not deceive 
him. 

“ My God ! ” he gasped the realization to himself, draw- 
ing back a little farther from her. “ Then that’s — that’s 
been the matter all the time.” 

“All what time?” she asked. 

“ Since you met Gerry Hull in Chicago.” 

He meant, of course, since the girl who had loved him 
had died ; but he did not know that. He had felt a change 
in the letters which had come to him which he could not 
explain as merely the result of their quarrel. Another 
man seemed to him the only possible explanation. 

Someone opened a door behind them ; and Ruth with- 
drew from the shaft of light. “We can’t stay here, 
George,” she said. 

She thought that now he was noticing a difference in 
her voice; but if he did, evidently he put it down as only 
part of her alteration toward him. 

“Where can we go?” he asked her. 

“Not back to the pension ” Ruth said. 

“No; no! Can’t you stay out with me here? We 
can walk.” 


BYRNE ARRIVES 


207 


“ Yes.’* 

He faced down the street of the Holy Fathers away 
from the pension ; she came beside him. He took her 
hand and for a moment held it as, undoubtedly, he and 
Cynthia had done when walking in darkened streets 
together; but after a few steps he released her. 

“ Your hand’s thinner, Cynthia.” 

“ I suppose so.” 

“ You’re a little thinner all over. I can’t see you well ; 
but you felt that way,” he said a little sadly, referring to 
his embrace which she had broken. " You’ve been over- 
doing, of course.” 

She made no reply ; and for several seconds he offered 
nothing more but went on, gazing down at her. “ You’ve 
been fine, Cynthia, in getting those people out.” He spoke 
of what he had heard of her work in the retreat. “ I knew 
ten days ago you were in it; but I couldn’t go to you! 
I tried to; I tried to get into the fight. We all tried — 
our men ; but they didn’t want us. Except Gerry Hull, 
of course, and a few like him.” 

He said this so completely without bitterness — with 
envy, only — that Ruth felt more warmly for him. “ It’s 
Gerry Hull, isn’t it, Cynthia?” he demanded directly. 

“ Yes,” she admitted now. Denial had become wholly 
impossible; moreover, by telling the truth — or that much 
of the truth which had to do with Gerry Hull — she might 
send George Byrne away. It was a cruel wrong to him, 
and to the girl who was dead ; but the wrong already was 
done. Ruth merely was beginning herself to reap some 
of the fruits of her deception. 

“You love him?” Byrne inquired of her inevasively. 


208 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“ Yes.” 

“ He loves you ? ” 

“I don’t know.” 

“ What’s he said to you ? ” 

“ Nothing — about loving me.” 

“But he loves you, all right; he must, if he knows 
you!” Byrne returned in pitiful loyalty to his Cynthia. 
“How much has gone on between you?” he demanded. 

Ruth related to him much about her meetings with 
Gerry, while they walked side by side about the Paris 
streets. A dozen times she was on the point of breaking 
down and telling him all the truth ; when his hand reached 
toward hers, instinctively, and suddenly pulled away; 
when they passed a light and, venturing to gaze up, she 
saw his face as he looked down at her; when he asked 
her questions or offered short, hoarse interjections, she 
almost cried out to him that she was a fraud; the girl 
he had loved, and who she was saying had turned from 
him, was dead and had been dead all that time during 
which he had felt the difference; she had never met Gerry 
Hull at all. 

“What are you stopping for?” he asked her at one of 
these times. “Thinking about the Sangamon River?” 

That was the Illinois river which flowed close by 
Cynthia Gail’s home. And Ruth knew from his voice 
that by the river Cynthia and he first had known 
love. 

“Yes,” Ruth said; but now her courage completely 
failed her. 

“ What did you say to me, then; oh, what did we both 
say, Cynthia?” 


BYRNE ARRIVES 


209 


This was no test or challenge of Ruth; it was simply a 
cry from his heart. 

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways , 

I love thee to the depth and height .... 

He was starting to quote something which they used to 
repeat together. 

“Go on, Cynthia !” he charged. 

“ I can’t,” Ruth cried. 

“You can’t — after you found it and taught it to me? 
' I love thee with the breath , smiles , tears, of all my life / ” 
he quoted bitterly to her. “ Let me look at you better, 
Cynthia ! ” 

They were passing a light and he drew her closer 
to it. 

“What has happened to you?” he whispered to her 
aghast when he had searched her through and through 
with his eyes. Then, “ Who are you?” 

He had made, he realized, some frightful mistake; how 
he could have come to make it, he did not know. “ You’re 
not Cynthia Gail!” he cried. For an instant, that dis- 
covery was enough for him. The agony which he had 
been suffering this last half hour was not real; the girl 
whom he had found on the street never had been his; 
they had both been going about only in some grotesque 
error. 

“ No; I’m not Cynthia Gail,” Ruth told him. 

“ Then where is she ? ” he demanded. “ Where is my 
Cynthia? ” His hands were upon Ruth and he shook her 
a little in the passion of his demand. He could not even 


210 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


begin to suspect the truth; but — from sight of her now 
— fear flicked him. If this girl was not Cynthia 

“ How are you so like her ? ” he put his challenge aloud. 
“Why did you pretend to be her? Why? You tell me 
why!” 

“I’ll tell you,” Ruth said. “But not here.” 

“Where?” 

“We must find some place where we can talk undis- 
turbed; where we can have a long talk.” 

“Take me to her, first. That’s all I care about. I 
don’t care about you — or why you did that. I don’t care, 
I say. Take me to Cynthia; or I’ll go there.” 

He started away toward the Rue des Saints Peres and 
the pension; so Ruth swiftly caught his sleeve. 

“ You can’t go to her ! ” Ruth gasped to him. “ She’s 
not there. Believe me, you can’t find her ! ” 

“Why not?” 

“ She’s — we must find some place, Mr. Byrne ! ” 

“She’s — what? Killed? Killed, you were going to 
say ? ” 

“ Yes ; she’s been killed.” 

“ In Picardy, you mean ? Where? How? Why, she 
was at her rooms two hours ago. Miss Wetherell told 
me ; or was she lying to me ? ” 

“ I was at the rooms two hours ago,” Ruth said. “ Miss 
Wetherell knows me as Cynthia Gail. I’ve been Cynthia 
Gail since January.” 

“ What do you mean? How ? ” 

“Cynthia Gail died in January, Mr. Byrne.” 

“ What ? How ? Where ? ” 

“She was killed — in Chicago.” 


BYRNE ARRIVES 


211 


“That’s a lie! Why, I’ve been hearing from her 
myself.” 

“ You’ve been hearing from me. I’m Cynthia Gail, I 
tell you. I’ve been Cynthia Gail since January.” 

He caught another glimpse of her face ; and his impetu- 
ousness to start to the Rue des Saints Peres collapsed, 
pitifully. “Where shall we go?” he asked. 

Ruth gazed about, uncertainly; she had not attended 
to their direction ; and now she found herself in a strange, 
narrow street of tiny shops and apartments, interrupted 
a half square ahead by a chasm of ruins and strewn debris, 
where one of those random shells from the German long- 
range gun, or a bomb dropped from a night-raiding Gotha 
recently had struck. The destruction had been done suf- 
ficiently long ago, however, for the curiosity of the neigh- 
borhood to have been already satisfied and for all treasures 
to have been removed. The ruin was fenced off, therefore, 
and was unguarded. Ruth gazed into the shell of the 
building and Byrne, glancing in also, saw that in the rear 
were apartments half wrecked and deserted, but which 
offered sanctuary from the street. 


CHAPTER XIV 


FULL CONFESSION 

O ONE will be likely to come in here,” Ruth said, 
J.%1 and stepped into the house. 

Byrne followed her without comment, quite indifferent 
to their surroundings. When Ruth spoke to him again 
about the house, he replied vacantly; his mind was not 
here, but with Cynthia Gail, where he had last seen her in 
Chicago that Sunday night in January when they had 
parted. What had thereafter happened to her was the 
first matter to him. 

Ruth, exploring the ruin, came upon a room which 
seemed to have been put in some sort of order, so far as 
she could see from the dim light which came through the 
doorway. 

“ Give me a match,” she asked Byrne ; he took a match- 
box from his pocket and, striking a light, he held it while 
they peered about. There was a fixture protruding from 
the wall, but no light resulted when Ruth turned the 
switch. Byrne’s match went out ; he struck several others 
before their search discovered a bit of a candle in an old 
sconce in a comer. Byrne lit it, and Ruth closed the door 
which led into what had been a hallway. She returned to 
Byrne, who had remained in the corner where the candle 
diffused its light. There was a built-in bench there beside 
an old fireplace, a couple of old chairs and a table. 


212 


FULL CONFESSION 


213 


“Let’s sit down,” Ruth said. 

“ You sit down,” Byrne bid. “ I’ll — ” he did not finish 
his sentence; but he remained standing, hands behind 
him, staring down at her as she seated herself upon the 
bench. 

“ Now,” he said to her. 

His lips pressed tight and Ruth could see that he jerked 
with short spasms of emotion which shuddered his 
shoulders suddenly together and shook his whole body. 

Ruth had desired the light instinctively, with no con- 
scious reason ; the same instinct which made her need to 
see him before she could go on, probably affected him; 
but with him had been the idea that the light would banish 
the illusion which overswept him again and again that 
this girl still was his Cynthia. But the faint, flickering illu- 
mination from the candle had failed to do that; it seemed, 
on the contrary, at times to restore and strengthen the 
illusion. A better light might have served him more 
faithfully; and if he brought her close to the candle and 
scrutinized her again as he had under the light of the 
street, he would see surely that she was someone else. 
But here, Ruth realized, she was falling into the postures 
of the girl who was dead. 

“Cynthia!” Byrne whispered again to her. 

“ What I know about Cynthia Gail,” Ruth said to him 
gently then, “is this.” And she told, almost without 
interruption from him, how Cynthia had met her death. 
Ruth did not explain how she had learned her facts ; for 
a while the facts themselves were overwhelming enough. 
He made sure that he could learn nothing more from her 
before he challenged her as to how she knew. 


214 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“You read this in a newspaper, you said?” 

“Yes; in all the Chicago newspapers,” Ruth replied. 
“ I read the accounts in all to find out everything which 
was known about her.” 

“ Wait now ! You said no one knew her; she was not 
identified.” 

“No; she was not.” 

“ Then you saw her ? You identified her ? ” 

“No; I never saw her.” 

“Then how do you know it was Cynthia? See here; 
what are you holding from me? How do you know she’s 
dead at all ? ” 

“The Germans told me. The Germans said that she 
was the girl who was killed in that wreck.” 

“The Germans? What Germans? What do you 
mean ? ” 

“A German — I don’t know who — but some German 
identified her from her passport and took the passport.” 

“Why? How do you know that? How did you get 
into her affairs, anyway ? ” 

“ Because I was like her,” Ruth said. “ I happened to 
be so very like her that ” 

“ That what? ” He was standing over her now, shak- 
ing, controlling himself by intervals of effort; and Ruth 
faltered, huddling back a little farther from him and gaz- 
ing up at him aghast. She had determined, a few minutes 
earlier, that there had become no alternative for her but 
to confess to him the entire truth; but the truth which 
she had to tell had become an incredible thing, as the 
truth — the exact truth of the circumstances which fix 
fates — has a way of becoming. 


FULL CONFESSION 


215 


Desperately her mind groped for a way to arrange the 
events of that truth in a way to make him believe; but 
each moment of delay only made her task more impossible. 
He had roused from the suspicion, which had begun to 
inflame him when they were yet on the street, to a cer- 
tainty that the girl whom he loved had been foully 
dealt by. 

“ That what ? ” he demanded again. 

So Ruth told him about herself, and the first meeting 
with Gerry Hull, and the pencil boxes, and the beggar on 
State Street. She did not proceed without interruptions 
now ; he challenged and catechized her. If he had refused 
her whole story, it would not have been so bad; but he 
was believing part of it — the part which fitted his pas- 
sions. He believed that the Germans had found the body 
of Cynthia Gail, and he believed more than that. He 
believed that they had killed her, and he cried out to Ruth 
to tell him when, and how. He believed that the Germans, 
having killed Cynthia, had tried to make use of her 
identity and her passport; and that they had succeeded! 
His hands were upon Ruth once more, holding her sternly 
and firmly. 

“ I put you under arrest,” he said to her hoarsely, " as 
accessory in the murder of Cynthia Gail and as a German 
spy.” 

And yet, as he held her there before him in the dim 
light of the tallow wick in the sconce upon the wall, she 
seemed to him, for flashes of time, to be the girl he accused 
her of having killed. 

“ Cynthia ; where are you ? ” he pleaded with her once 
as though, within Ruth, was the soul of his love whom 


216 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


he could call to come out and take possession of this 
living form. 

Then he had her under arrest again. “ Come with me ! ” 
he commanded, and he thrust her toward the door. But 
now Ruth fought against him. 

“ No ; we must stay here ! ” 

“Why?” 

“ Till you will believe in me ! ” 

“ Then we’ll never leave here. Will you come, or must 
I take you ? ” 

“Leave me alone just a minute.” 

“ So you can get away ? ” 

“No; just you stay here. I’ll go back there,” Ruth 
tossed toward the comer where she had sat. “There’s 
no way out. Only — let go of me ! ” 

He did so, watching her suspiciously. She dropped into 
her seat in the corner under the candle. “ I’ve told you 
why I did this,” she said. 

“And you didn’t fool me.” 

“ I’ve no proof of anything I’ve told you,” Ruth went 
on, “only because, if you’ll think about it, you’ll see I 
couldn’t carry proof.” 

“I should say not.” 

“But I’ve done something since I’ve been here which 
proves what I am.” 

“What? Helping refugees out of Picardy? What 
does that prove — except that you’ve nerve?” 

“ Nothing,” Ruth admitted. “ If I was a German agent, 
I might have done that. I wasn’t thinking of that.” 

“What of, then?” 


FULL CONFESSION 


217 


She was thinking about her exposure of De Trevenac; 
but, though now it was known that Louis de Trevenac 
had been proved a spy, had been tried and punished, no 
explanation had been given as to how he had been caught. 
Those who tried him had not known, perhaps ; only Gerry 
knew. 

“ Gerry Hull will tell you,” Ruth replied. “ I don’t ask 
you to take my word about myself anymore; I ask you 
only, before you accuse me, to send for him.” 

“ Gerry Hull ! ” Byrne iterated, approaching her closely 
again and gazing down hostilely. For an instant he had 
not been able to disassociate Gerry Hull from himself as 
a rival for Cynthia Gail. “ So he knows all about you, 
does he ? ” 

“ No; he thinks I am Cynthia Gail ; but ” 

“What?” 

“He knows — he must know that, whoever I am, I’m 
loyal ! So send for him, or go and speak to him before 
you do anything more ; that’s all I ask. Oh, I know this 
has been horrible for you, Mr. Byrne.” For the first time 
Ruth was losing control of herself. “But do you sup- 
pose it’s been easy for me ? And do you suppose I’ve done 
it for myself or for any adventure to see the war or just 
to come here ? I’ve done it to go into Germany ! Oh, you 
won’t stop me now! For if you leave me alone — don’t 
you see — I may get into Germany tomorrow or this week 
or anyway before the next big attack can come! What 
do I count, what do you count, what can the memory of 
Cynthia Gail count in comparison with what I may do if 
I can go on into Germany? What ” 

“ Don’t cry ! ” Byrne forbade her hoarsely, seizing her 


218 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


shoulder and shaking her almost roughly. “ My God, 
Cynthia,” he begged, “ don’t cry.” 

He had called her by that name again; and Ruth knew 
that, not her appeal, but her semblance in her emotion to 
Cynthia, had overcome him for the moment. 

“ I’m not going to cry,” Ruth said. “ But ” 

He stopped her brusquely. He seemed afraid, indeed, 
to let her go on. “ Whether I’ve got to bring you to the 
army authorities and give you over at once under arrest,” 
he said coldly, “ is up to you. If you agree to go with me 
quietly — and keep your agreement — I’ll take you along 
myself.” 

“ Where?” Ruth asked. 

“ I know some people, whom I can trust and who can 
take you in charge till I can talk to Hull. He’s the only 
reference you care to give ? ” 

“Yes,” she said. 

“If he stands for you, that won’t mean anything to 
me, I might as well tell you,” Byrne returned. “ You’ve 
probably got him fooled; you could do it, all right, I 
guess.” 

“ Then what’s the use in your sending for him ? ” 

“ Oh ; you think now there’s none ? It was your idea* 
not mine.” 

“ I’ll go with you quietly to your friends,” Ruth decided, 
ending this argument. “ I’ll understand that you’re going 
to communicate with Gerry Hull about me.” 

She arose and Byrne seized her arm firmly. He blew 
out the candle and, still clasping her, he groped his way 
to the door. Some one stepped in the rubbish on the 
other side. They had been conscious, during their stay 


FULL CONFESSION 


219 


in the room, that many people had passed outside; once 
or twice, perhaps, a passer-by might have paused to gaze 
at the ruin ; but Ruth had heard no one enter the house. 
Byrne had heard no one; for his grasp on Ruth’s arm 
tightened with a start of surprise as he realized that the 
someone who now suddenly moved on the other side of 
the door must have come there moments before. 

Byrne stepped back, drawing Ruth with him, and 
thrusting her a little behind him. The person on the 
other side of the door was a watchman, perhaps, or the 
owner of this house or a neighbor investigating to what 
use these ruined rooms were now being put. Byrne, 
thinking thus, spoke loudly in labored French, “ I am an 
American officer, with a companion, who has looked in 
here.” 

“ Very well,” came in French and in a man’s voice from 
the other side of the door. Byrne advanced to the door 
and opened it, therefore, and was going through when a 
bludgeon beat down upon him. Byrne reeled back, raising 
his left arm to shield off another blow; he tried to strike 
back with his left arm and grapple his assailant; but with 
his right, he still held to Ruth as though she would seize 
this chance to escape; and yet, at the same time, Ruth 
felt that he was protecting her with his body before hers. 

“Let me go!” she jerked to be free. “I’ll — help 
you ! ” 

He did not mean to let her go when she struggled free ; 
he was still trying to hold to her and also fight the man 
who was beating at him. But her getting free, let him 
close with his assailant and grapple with him. They spun 
about and went down, rolling over and over in the debris. 


220 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


Ruth grabbed up a bit of iron pipe from among the 
wreckage on the floor ; and she bent over trying to strike 
at the man with the bludgeon. 

“ Help ! ” she called out. “ Secours! ” 

She knew now that the man who had waited outside 
was no mere defender of the house; the treachery and the 
violence of his attack could not be explained by concern 
for safety of that ruin. Ruth could not think who the 
man might be or what was his object except that he was 
fighting to kill, as he struck and fought with Byrne on the 
floor. And Byrne, knowing it, was fighting to kill him, 
too. 

“ Secours! ” Ruth screamed for help again and with her 
bit of iron, she struck — whom, she did not know. But 
they rolled away and pounded each other only a few 
moments more before one overcome the other. One 
leaped up while the other lay on the floor; the one who 
had leaped up, crouched down and bludgeoned the other 
again ; so that Ruth knew that Byrne was the one who lay 
still. She screamed out again for help while she flung 
herself at the man who was bending over. But he turned 
about and caught her arms and held her firmly. He bent 
his head to hers and whispered to her while he held her. 

“ Weg !” The whisper warned her. It was German, 
“Away ! ” And the rest that he said was in German. “ I 
have him for you struck dead! Careful, now! Away to 
Switzerland ! ” 

He dropped Ruth and fled ; she went after him, breath- 
less, trying to cry out; but her cries were weak and 
unheard. He ran through the rear of the house into a 
narrow alley down which he disappeared ; she went to the 


FULL CONFESSION 


221 


end of the alley, crying out. But the man was gone. She 
stopped running at last and ceased to call out. She stood, 
swaying so that she caught to a railing before a house to 
steady herself. The words of the whisper ran on her 
lips. “ I have him for you struck dead ! ” 

They gave her explanation of the attack which, like 
the words of De Trevenac to her, permitted only one 
possible meaning. The man who had waited in the ruined 
house must have been one of the German agents in Paris 
whom Ruth had returned to meet. Evidently, while 
Byrne had been inquiring for her, the Germans too had 
been vigilant; they had awaited her return either to get 
her report of what she had seen in Picardy or to assign 
her to another task or — she could not know why they 
awaited her; but certainly they had. One of them had 
learned that afternoon that she had returned ; he was seek- 
ing her, perhaps, when Byrne found her. Perhaps he 
had known the peril to her from Byrne; perhaps he merely 
had learned, from whatever he had overheard of their 
talk in that ruined room, that Byrne accused her of being 
a German spy; and so he had taken his chance to strike, 
for her, Byrne dead. 

The horror of this realization sickened her; the German 
murderer “for her” had made good his escape; and it 
would be useless to report him now. She would be able 
to offer no description of him ; and to report that a large 
man, who was a German spy, had been about that part of 
Paris this evening would be idle. But she must return at 
once to Byrne who might not be dead. So she steadied 
herself and hastened down the street seeking the ruined 
house. 


222 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


It was a part of Paris quite unfamiliar to her; and, as 
she had not observed where she and Byrne had wandered, 
she passed a square or two without better placing herself ; 
and then, inquiring of a passer-by, where was a ruined 
house, she obtained directions which seemed to be correct ; 
but arriving at the ruin, she found it was not the one which 
Byrne and she had entered. Consequently it was many 
.minutes before she found the ruined house which gave her 
no doubt of its identity. For people were gathered about 
it ; and Ruth, approaching these, learned that a monstrous 
attack had been made upon an American infantry officer 
who, when first found, was believed to have been killed ; 
but the surgeon who had arrived and had removed him, 
said this was not so. Robbery, some said, had been the 
motive of the crime; for the officer had much money in 
his pocket; but the murderer had not time to remove it. 
Others, who claimed to have heard a girl’s voice, believed 
there might have been more personal reasons ; why had a 
man and a girl been in those rooms that night ? 

Ruth breathed her thankfulness that Byrne was not 
dead; and she withdrew. Since Byrne had been taken 
away, she could do nothing for him ; and she would simply 
destroy herself by giving herself up to the authorities. If 
Byrne lived and regained consciousness, undoubtedly he 
would inform against her. 

But though she would not give herself up, certainly 
she would not try to escape if Byrne accused her; she 
would return to her room and go about her work while 
she awaited consequences. 

None followed her that night. She admitted to Mili- 
cent, when questioned, that she had met Lieutenant Byrne 


FULL CONFESSION 


223 


upon the street and they had walked together ; Ruth said 
also that she had seen her brother. Milicent evidently 
ascribed her agitation to a quarrel with Byrne. 

Ruth lay awake most of that night. The morning 
paper which Milicent and she read contained no mention, 
amid the tremendous news from the front, of the attack 
upon an American officer in a ruined house ; and no con- 
sequences threatened Ruth that morning. She planned 
for a while to try to trace Byrne and learn whether he 
had regained consciousness; then she abandoned that 
purpose. She was satisfied, from one of those instincts 
which baffle question, that Byrne lived ; and it would be 
only a question of time before he must accuse her. 

Yet she might have time enough to leave Paris and 
France — to get away into Switzerland and into Germany. 
For the fact that a German had for her attempted to 
strike her accuser dead was final proof that the Germans 
had not connected her with the betrayal of De Trevenac; 
they believed that she had been in Picardy all this time 
on account of orders given her by De Trevenac. 

It was possible, of course, that the German who had 
struck for her and whom she had pursued, would now 
himself suspect her. Yet her flight after him might have 
seemed to him only her ruse to escape. What he had last 
said to her, she must receive as her orders from the 
Germans in Paris. “Away to Switzerland ! ” 

That concurred with the sentence of instruction given 
upon that page which she had received with her passport 
that cold January morning in Chicago. . . . “You 

will report in person, via Switzerland ; apply for passport 
to Lucerne.” 


224 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


At this moment when, for the cause of her country and 
its allies, she had determined that she must make the 
attempt to go on to Germany, the Germans were ready 
to have her. And that was easy to understand ; she had 
spent weeks going about freely behind the newly formed 
English and French lines which bagged back about the 
immense salient which the Germans had thrust toward 
Amiens; she was supposed, as a German, to have ready 
report about the strength of those lines as seen from the 
rear, of the strength of the support, the morale of soldiers 
and civilians and the thousand other details which the 
enemy desired to know. 

So Ruth went early that morning to the United States 
Consul General with her passport which long ago had 
been substituted for that ruined passport of Cynthia 
Gail’s; and she offered it for vise , asking permission to 
leave Paris and France for a visit to the neutral country 
of Switzerland, and, more particularly, to Lucerne. She 
stated that the object of her journey was rest and recu- 
peration; she knew that, not infrequently in the recent 
months, American girls who had been working near the 
war zones had been permitted vacations in Switzerland; 
but she found that times were different now. She encoun- 
tered no expressed suspicion and no discourtesy; she 
simply was informed that in the present crisis it was 
impossible to act immediately upon such requests. Her 
application would be filed and passed upon in due time; 
and a clerk questioned Ruth concerning the war service 
which she had rendered which was supposed to have so 
exhausted her that she desired rest in Switzerland. 

Ruth, hot with shame, perforce related what she had 


FULL CONFESSION 


225 


been through in the retreat. She was quite aware when 
she went away and returned to her work that her appli- 
cation for permission to go to Switzerland would be the 
most damning evidence against her, when Byrne should 
bring his accusation; and now, having made application, 
she could do nothing but wait where she was. However, 
she heard nothing from Byrne or from the authorities 
upon that day nor upon the succeeding days of the week 
during which she worked, as she had when she first came 
to Paris, in the offices of the relief society; upon almost 
every afternoon she visited Charles Gail who was slowly 
sinking. 

After three days and then after a wait of three more, 
she revisited the consulate and inquired about her per- 
mission for Switzerland; but she got no satisfaction 
either time. But when at last the week wore out and she 
met no interference with her ordinary comings and goings, 
she was beginning to doubt her beliefs that George Byrne 
lived ; he must have died, she thought, and without having 
been able to communicate his knowledge of her to anyone. 
Then one night she was returning to the Rue des Saints 
Peres a little later than usual ; the mild, April afternoon 
had dimmed to twilight and, as she passed the point where 
George Byrne had encountered her, fears possessed her 
again ; they lessened only to increase once more, as they 
now had formed a habit of doing, when she approached 
the pension . 

“ Letters for me, Fanchette?” she said to the daughter 
of her landlady who was at the door when Ruth came in. 

“No letters, Mademoiselle; but Monsieur le Lieuten- 
ant ! ” 


226 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


Ruth stopped stark. Many Messieurs les Lieutenants 
and men of other ranks called at the pension for Milicent 
or for Ruth, just for an evening’s entertainment; but such 
did not appear at this hour. 

“He is in the salon, Mademoiselle.” 

Ruth went in. If it was George Byrne, at least then he 
was alive and now strong again. The lamp in the little 
salon had been lit; and a tall, uniformed figure arose from 
beside it. 

“Hello, Cynthia,” a familiar voice greeted Gerry 
Hull’s voice ! 

Ruth retreated a little and held to the door to support 
her in her relaxation of relief. A hundred times during 
this terrible week, Ruth had wanted to send for him. 

“ I’m so glad to see you, Gerry.” 

“That’s good.” His tall, lithe self was beside her; his 
strong, steady fingers grasped her arm and gently sup- 
ported her when she let go the door. He closed the door 
and led her to a chair where the light of the lamp would 
fall full upon her. “Sit down there,” he commanded 
kindly; and, when she obeyed, he seated himself opposite 
pulling his chair closer the better to observe her but at 
the same time bringing himself under the light. 

He had changed a great deal since last she saw him, 
Ruth thought. No; she corrected herself, not so much 
since she had parted from him after the retreat from 
Picardy; but he had altered greatly since last he sat 
opposite her in this little salon at that time they talked 
together about De Trevenac. The boy he had been when 
she first saw him on the streets of Chicago; the boy 
he had been when he had spoken at Mrs. Corliss’, had 


FULL CONFESSION 


227 


been maturing with marvelous swiftness in these last 
weeks into a man. His eyes showed it — his fine, 
impulsive, determined eyes, no less resolute and not less 
impatient, really, but somehow a little more tolerant and 
understanding than they had been. His lips showed it — 
thinner a trifle and a trifle more drawn and straight 
though they seemed to smile quite as easily. His whole 
bearing betrayed, not so much an abandonment of creeds 
he had lived by, as a doubt of their total sufficiency and 
the unsettledness which comes to one beginning to grasp 
something new. 

“You’ve changed a good deal,” Ruth offered audibly. 

“ I was thinking that about you,” Gerry said. 

“I guess — I guess we’ve changed some — together.” 

“ I guess so.” 

She sat without response. Someone neared the door 
and Ruth roused and, forgetting Gerry for an instant, she 
listened in covert alarm in a manner which had become so 
habitual to her these last days that she was not aware of 
it until he noticed it. The step passed the door ; and Ruth 
settled back. 

“ Well, Cynthia,” Gerry asked her directly then, “ what 
have you been up to ? ” 

“ What do you mean ? ” 

“ I was going to come to Paris to see you next week,” 
Gerry said. “ But something particular came up yester- 
day to make me manage this today. I shouldn’t tell you, 
I suppose; in fact I know I shouldn’t. The intelligence 
people have been poking about inquiring about you.” 

Ruth felt herself growing pale but she asked steadily 
enough, 


228 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“ Where ? ” 

“ Where I was for one place.” 

“ They asked you about me?” 

He nodded. “ They asked Agnes Ertyle, too.” 

“ Why ? ” 

“That’s what I came here to find out. What’re you 
up to now ? ” 

He knew nothing, Ruth was sure, about George Byrne. 
Whatever knowledge was in the hands of those who ques- 
tioned him, he knew nothing more than the fact of the 
inquiry. 

“It’s because I’ve applied for permission to go to 
Switzerland, I suppose,” Ruth said. 

“To go where?” he questioned. 

She repeated it. 

He bent closer quickly. 

“ Why in the world are you going there ? ” 

“ To rest up.” 

“You? That’s what you told the Embassy people, I 
suppose.” 

“Yes.” 

“ Well, did they believe it ? ” 

“I don’t know.” 

“ I hope you didn’t expect me to. Look at me, Cynthia 
Gail. Why are you traveling to Switzerland; you have 
to tell me the truth of what you intend to do ! ” 


CHAPTER XV 
gerry’s problem 

R UTH had told that truth, perforce, to George Byrne 
with the result that he had condemned her; and, 
when meeting this condemnation, she had said that Gerry 
must know that she was loyal. But did she know that 
now? 

Questions crowded upon her which, she knew, must 
come to him. She had betrayed De Trevenac; but it was 
a known principle of the German-spy. organization that, 
at certain times and under certain circumstances, one 
agent would betray another. The Germans punished 
some of their spies in this way; in other cases, when a 
man was to be discarded who had ceased to be useful, 
another spy had been appointed to betray him for the 
advantage that the betrayal would bring to the in- 
former. 

Immediately after that betrayal, Ruth had gone to the 
precise districts concerning which the Germans had de- 
sired information preceding and during their attack and 
where results proved that spies must have been numerous 
and unsuspected. Gerry had commented upon this to 
Ruth during their retreat from Mirevaux; and when she 
replied, he had realized again that she was not in France 
doing “just relief work.” He had asked what else she 
was doing; she had evaded answer. Would he believe 
229 


230 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


her answer now or only that part of it which George 
Byrne had believed ? 

She arose and went to the door and saw that it was 
firmly closed. 

“Do you remember, Gerry,” she asked when she re- 
turned “ that first time we talked together in Mrs. Corliss' 
conservatory, that I said I woke up that morning trying 
to imagine myself knowing you — without the slightest 
hope that I ever could ? ” 

“I remember you said something like that, Cynthia.” 

“Did you ever wonder how that might be? I mean 
that I should have been invited to Mrs. Corliss’ and that 
same morning not imagine that I could meet you ? ” 

“I suppose I thought Mrs. Corliss hadn’t called you 
till late,” Gerry said. 

“ She never called me, myself, at all. A girl — a strange 
girl, whom I had never seen — a girl named Cynthia Gail 
had been asked. But she had died before that day ; so I 
came in her place.” 

Gerry drew a little nearer intently. “ Because your 
names were the same ; you were related to her ? ” 

“ No; I wasn’t related to her at all ; and our names were 
entirely different.” 

“ But you ” 

“ Took her name, yes, I did.” 

“And her passport?” He was thinking now, Ruth 
knew, of her ruined passport and how he had advised her 
about having a new picture put on it and how it had been, 
not by her own credentials but by his requesting Agnes 
Ertyle to vouch for her, that she had been accepted in 
France. 


GERRY’S PROBLEM 


231 


“Yes; I took her passport and her identity — every- 
thing she had and was, Gerry. I became on noon of that 
day Cynthia Gail. That forenoon, I was Ruth Alden 
working for a real estate firm named Hilton Brothers in 
Chicago for twenty-five dollars a week. I wanted to tell 
you that — oh I wanted so much to tell you all about 
myself that afternoon when you asked how I happened to 
be at Mrs. Corliss' and could think and say such different 
things from the other people there." 

“Why didn’t you?" 

She confused him, at first, as she had George Byrne; 
and she made Gerry suspicious, too, but with an imper- 
sonal challenge and distrust quite distinct from what 
Byrne’s had been. The real Cynthia Gail, of course, had 
meant nothing to Gerry ; he had known her only as Ruth 
had come to him. What he was concerned for was the 
cause for which and in which he had lived for four 
years — the cause which was protected and secured by 
passports and credentials and authentic identities and 
which was threatened by those who forged passports and 
appeared in the allied lines under names other than their 
own. 

“ I dared trust no one then — you almost last of all." 

“With what?" 

“The great plan which I dreamed I might carry out 
alone — a plan of going into Germany, Gerry, as a spy 
for America ! " 

“Ah ! So that’s the idea in Switzerland ! ’’ 

“Yes. The chance came to me that morning within a 
few minutes after I spoke to you in the motor car on the 
street. Y ou remember that ? ’ ’ 


232 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“Of course.” 

“ I was almost crazy to get into the war ; and I couldn’t 
find any way; then . . 

She told him, much as she had told Byrne, about the 
German who had played the beggar and who had stopped 
her; of the disclosures in her room; of her going to the 
hotel and finding Hubert waiting ; and then, after she had 
gone to Mrs. Corliss’ and met Gerry, how the German 
woman had ordered her to take the Ribot. 

“ The rest about me, I guess you know now, Gerry.” 

He made no answer as he had made no challenge 
except a question or two to bring out some point more 
clearly. For a while, as she made her confession, he had 
remained seated opposite her and gazing at her with in- 
creasing confusion and distress; then, unable to remain 
quiet, he had leaped to his feet. 

“ Go on,” he had bid when she halted. “ I’m listening.” 
And she knew that he was not only listening but feeling 
too as he paced to and fro before her on the other side of 
the lamp staring down at the floor for long seconds, 
glancing at her, then staring away again. 

“ Hush ! ” he had warned her once when someone passed 
the door; she had waited and he had stood listening for 
the step to die away. 

“All right now,” he had told her. 

That was all that he had said ; but his tone had told of 
fear of anyone else hearing what she was confessing to 
him ; and then there beat back upon him realization that 
the chief threat to her must be from himself. 

“ I knew you were up to something, Ruth,” he mur- 
mured under his breath. “ Ruth,” he repeated her name, 


GERRY’S PROBLEM 


233 


“ Ruth Alden! That fits you better somehow; and what 
you’ve been doing fits you better, too. But — ” he rea- 
lized suddenly that this was acknowledging belief in her 
— belief beyond his right to have faith in this girl who 
once on the boat had tried to save his life and who, upon 
the battle field, had saved him and at frightful risk to 
herself. But he was not thinking chiefly of that; he was 
thinking of their intimacies from the first and particularly 
of that day when, after she had saved him from the wreck 
of his machine, they had driven away from the battle 
together. 

“ Only two things have happened to me since I went on 
board the Ribot which you don’t know all about,” she was 
adding, “and which had any connection with the secret 
I was keeping from you. One was my meeting with 
De Trevenac. He stopped me on the street, supposing I 
was a German agent. He gave me the orders which I 
told you he gave to someone else.” 

“ I was supposing,” Gerry replied, “ that the entire truth 
about De Trevenac was something like that.” 

“You know the entire truth about him now,” Ruth 
said. “ What I told you before I specifically said was not 
the entire truth.” 

Gerry winced a little as he turned toward her. “ Don’t 
think I’m holding that against you — if you’re Ruth 
Alden, as you say. Only if you’re German ” 

“German!” Ruth refused the word with a gasp. 
“ Gerry, you can’t believe that.” 

“ What was the other episode ? ” he asked quickly ; and 
now she told him about George Byrne; of her attempt to 
continue to deceive him ; of his mistaking her for his love ; 


234 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


then his discovery of the truth and their talk in the ruined 
house; of Byrne’s accusation and arrest of her; of the 
irruption of the German and his attack; his repetition of 
the order to her to go to Switzerland ; and of her waiting 
since. 

“ I told him when he accused me and I could not make 
him believe, that you would know about me, Gerry! ” she 
cried. “I thought everything would be all right if only 
I could get you! And oh — oh I’ve wanted you to come 
ever since ! ” 

She did not mean to say that, he saw ; it was not pos- 
sible that this cry was planned and practiced for effect. 
It burst so unbidden, so unguarded from her breast; and 
seized upon him like her hand — her small, soft, strong 
little hand — closing upon his heart. It told to him a 
thousand times better than all the words she had just 
said, of her loneliness and fears and dreads fought out 
all by herself in her wild, solitary, desperate adventure. 
And Gerry, gazing down at her, did not ask himself again 
whether he believed. Instead he saw her once more as 
first he had seen her at Mrs. Corliss’, and his heart com- 
pressed as never it had before as he thought of her, a 
little office girl making twenty-five dollars a week, coming 
to that big, rich house not knowing who or what she 
would meet there and standing up so singly and alone for 
her country and her faith ; he saw her again as she was on 
the Ribot, surrounded by new terrors and with perils to 
her increasing day by day and playing her part so well; 
and now passions and sensations which he had fought and 
had tried to put off, overwhelmed him again. He felt 
her, wet and small with all her clothing clinging to her 


GERRY’S PROBLEM 


235 


as he had taken her from a sailor’s arms and she, looking 
up at him, had tried so bravely and defiantly to deny what 
her cries had just confessed to all the ship — that she was 
his ; she had gone into the sea for him. He saw and heard 
and felt her hands upon him again as he lay helpless under 
the wreck of his airplane and she worked beside him, 
coolly and well, though machine-gun bullets were striking 
all about her; and she had freed him. The sensation of 
their ride together returned while he had been almost 
helpless in the seat of the truck watching her drive and 
listening while she talked to him of another man whom 
she had liked — the English officer, who had been killed, 

“ 1583." 

As Gerry had envied that other man his comradeship 
with this girl, now jealousy rose for the man who, for 
the wanton moments of his tragic mistake, had possessed 
himself of her. She had not wished it; she had submitted 
to his arms, to his kisses only perforce. She had said, 
indeed, that she had not quite succeeded in submitting; 
and Gerry found himself rejoicing in that. But another 
man had held her ; another had kissed her in full passion ; 
and Gerry was dazed to find now how he felt at that. 

He had known that she had been his almost from the 
first; but he had not known that he had wanted her his 
until he had had to think of her as having been someone 
else’s. 

He gazed down at her now, little, sweet, more beautiful 
than she had ever seemed to him before, and alone in 
danger; and his arms hungered to hold her; his face 
burned with blood running hot to press warm lips against 
hers. He wanted to feel with her all that any other man 


236 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


had felt; and she — she would not put him off. But in- 
stead, he had to judge her. So he stood away, his hands 
behind his back, one hand locked tight on the other wrist. 

“Well,” he said, “I’m here; what do you want me to 
do?” 

“You’ll do it for me, Gerry?” 

“What?” 

“ Help me to Switzerland.” 

“Still as Cynthia Gail, of course.” 

“Yes.” 

“Then you turn into — whom?” 

“ The German girl whom they will take into Germany.” 

“ I suppose so. But who is she ? Where does she come 
from ? What is her name ? ” 

“ I don’t know.” 

“What?” 

“ She came from Chicago, I suppose.” 

“ You suppose ; and you don’t know even her name and 
intend to try to be her! ” 

“It’s possible, Gerry; oh it’s possible, truly. You see 
I don’t believe the Germans here in Paris, or those who’ll 
meet me in Switzerland, know who I’m supposed to be.” 

“ What do you think they’ll know ? ” 

“That the girl who’s here going under the name of 
Cynthia Gail, and doing the work I’m doing, is really one 
of themselves and that she’ll appear in Lucerne. Those 
are the essentials ; and so far as I’ve been able to observe 
the German-spy system — and you see I’ve been a part of 
it for a while ” 

“Yes; I see.” 

“ — it seems pretty well reduced to communicating just 


GERRY’S PROBLEM 


237 


essentials. Of course I’ve prepared a German-American 
name and identity for myself. If they really know any- 
thing in Germany about the girl whom their Chicago 
people sent here, they’ll have me; but if they don’t, I’ll 
get on. That’s the part I’ve really been preparing myself 
for all these months, Gerry; just being Cynthia Gail here 
was — nothing.” 

He felt himself jerk and recoil at that. Had she been 
playing a part with him all this time as well as to others ; 
had this being his been only a role which she had acted? 

“ I see,” he said to her curtly. 

“ Oh, not nothing to me, Gerry, in the things I’ve had 
to do when I wrote Cynthia’s mother and father and when 
I had to write George Byrne and when I’ve been seeing 
her brother. I meant that deceiving Hubert and his aunt 
and her friends here and the rest and you, Gerry, was — ” 
she did not finish. 

“ Quite simple,” he completed for her with relief. So 
the deception with him had not been hard because, in what 
would have been hard, she had not deceived him. 
“ Where’s Hubert ? ” Gerry questioned now. 

“ I don’t know. I don’t think he’s in Paris, now.” 

“You haven’t heard from him recently?” 

“ He sent me several postals when I was at Mirevaux ; 
I’ve not heard from him since.” 

“ Then he knows nothing whatever about this ? ” 

“ He doesn’t know that George Byrne found me, Gerry ; 
but he knows I’m not Cynthia Gail.” 

“Ah! So you told him some time ago, did you?” 
Jealousy of Hubert now leaped in him; Hubert had 
known of her what he could not know. 


238 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“I didn’t tell him; or I didn’t mean to, Gerry,” Ruth 
explained. “ He knew about me — that is, about Cynthia 
Gail, of course — and he asked me questions on the train 
coming here from Bordeaux which I had to answer and 
answered wrongly.” 

“ Oh ; he caught you, then ; he told you so ! ” 

“He caught me, Gerry; but he didn’t tell me so,” Ruth 
corrected. “I didn’t know at all that I’d given him 
answers which he knew were false until I found out some 
family facts from Charles Gail here the other day. 
Hubert must have known I wasn’t Cynthia, but ” 

“What?” 

“I guess he trusted to me, myself, that I could not be 
against our cause.” 

She had not attempted to make a rebuke of that reply; 
but Gerry felt it. 

“ Hub hadn’t been put in my position, Ruth,” he de- 
fended himself. “ He hadn’t been made responsible for 
you — in France.” 

“ I think that he felt himself wholly responsible for me, 
Gerry,” Ruth replied, coloring warmly as she thought of 
the complete loyalty of her strange friend. “ Only he felt 
willing to accept the responsibility.” 

“But he did not know what you were doing!” Gerry 
protested. “ He did not know that you were accused as a 
spy!” 

“ No,” Ruth said ; then, “ So I am accused, Gerry ? ” 

“ Byrne accused you, you said. Inquiries certainly have 
been made; that puts another problem up to a man.” 

“Yes,” she said. But he knew, as he gazed down at 


GERRY’S PROBLEM 


239 


her, that she was thinking that Hubert would have trusted 
her just the same. 

Was she manipulating him now, Gerry wondered? 
Was it possible that this girl had been playing with and 
utilizing him in what had just passed? Had George 
Byrne come and had all happened which she had told him 
or was it conceivable that she had contrived the whole 
story, or distorted it for effect upon him to anticipate 
accusation against her from other quarters ? Had Hubert 
really found out about her ; or was that too invented for 
the sake of flicking him into blind espousal of her plans? 
Flashes of such sort fought with every natural reaction, 
to remembrance of his own close comradeship with her. 
Impossible ; impossible ! his impulses iterated to him. But 
his four years in France had taught him that the impossible 
in relations, in understandings, in faiths and associations 
between man and man and man and woman had ceased to 
exist. In this realization, at least, his situation was truly 
distinct from Hubert’s. He believed in her; at least, he 
wished to tear his hands apart from their clench together 
behind him ; he longed to extend them to her ; he burned 
at thought of lifting her again and feeling her weight in 
his arms ; and when he looked at her lips, it fired flame 
to his; yet 

“I don’t flatter myself that I can control the report 
which is being compiled about you, Ruth Alden,” he said. 
“ What I have said, and may say, will only be a part of the 
data which will determine what’s to be done with you. 
For you realize, now, that one thing or the other’s to be 
done.” 

“ I realize that, Gerry,” she said. 


240 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“ You know that in one case they must arrest you and 
try you — by court-martial.” 

“ Yes.” 

“ I may — I don’t know ! God help you and me, Ruth 
Alden, I don’t know yet — I may have to give part of the 
evidence which will accuse you ! But though I do — and 
after I’ve done it — you must know that I’ll be fighting 
for you, believing in spite of facts which I may be bound 
to witness, that you somehow are all right. I’ll be trying 
to save you. I suppose that sounds mad to you ; but it’s 
true.” 

“ It doesn’t sound mad to me.” 

“ In thje other case,” he went on, “ in case I can decide 
honestly with myself that you cannot possibly be doing 
anything one jot to threaten our cause, and in case Byrne 
has died or does not speak, then probably you will be 
passed on to Switzerland and you’ll try to go into 
Germany.” 

Ruth waited without reply. 

“Do you see what you’re putting up to me? You’re 
making me either accuse you to the French and cause you 
to be imprisoned and tried; or, if I believe and let them 
believe that you’re American, I must know that I’m send- 
ing you on into Germany to face a German firing squad. 
For they’ll shoot you down, as they did Edith Cavell, 
when they catch you ; and they’ll catch you ! You haven’t 
a chance and you know it! So give it up — give it up, I 
say ! Go tomorrow and cancel your request ; go home or 
stay here and work only as you have been doing.” 

“And when I’m taking my train of refugees out of the 
villages in the next zone where they strike, know again 


GERRY’S PROBLEM 


241 


that I might have done some bit to prevent it and — I was 
afraid? What can you think of me? Do you think I 
could have done all that I've told you I have just for the 
sake of working here in Paris ? Do you think I could see 
death come to so many and care how it comes to me?” 

“ IPs not just death,” Gerry said, quivering as he gazed 
down at her. “ If I could be sure they’d just kill you, it 
might be easier to leave your affairs to you. Who owns 
the right to refuse another his way to die? But you’re 
a girl. At first when they may think you one of them- 
selves, you may be safe; but then they’ll discover you. 
A man — or what passes in Germany for a man — 
probably will find you out. He— — ” 

Gerry could say no more ; for a moment his resistance 
to himself broke and his hands seized her. “They 
shan’t ! ” he denied to her fiercely. “ They shan’t ! ” 
Gently she raised a hand and, as she had upon that 
occasion before, she loosened the grasp of his fingers. 

“You’re not to think about what could happen to me; 
you must think only of what I may do, Gerry,” she said. 

He released her, as he had before; but this time he 
caught the fingers which opposed his ; he bent quickly and, 
carrying her hand to his lips, he kissed it. 

He drew back from her then; and she closed her other 
hand over the fingers which he had kissed and, so holding, 
she stood gazing up at him under lashes wet with tears. 

“ I’m going now,” he said abruptly. “ What I’ll have 
to do about you — I don’t know. I suppose you realize 
that since you’ve applied for permission for Switzerland, 
and since I’ve been questioned about you, probably you 
are under special observation. So whatever you think I 


242 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


may be doing about you, you’d better not attempt to move 
for the present.” 

“I don’t expect to make any move at all — unless I 
receive my permission for Switzerland,” Ruth said. 

“All right.” He turned away and looked for his cap in 
the corner where he had left it; then he came back and 
briefly said good night. 

Out upon the street with the darkness enveloping him, 
misgivings tormented him again. The little, dim Rue des 
Saints Peres was quiet and almost deserted ; all Paris 
seemed hushed. The spring warmth of the evening which, 
in another year, would have brought stir and gladness 
which would have thronged the avenues with folk upon 
idle, joyous errands tonight brought only oppression. 
Paris, Gerry knew, denied danger; yet Paris and, with 
Paris, all of France; and, with France, all Europe; and, 
with Europe, America and the rest of the world lay 
menaced that April night as they had not been since the 
September of the Marne. 

For in the great bulge in the battle line which the enemy 
had thrust between Amiens and Paris, the Germans had 
established firmly their positions and there they rested, 
while to the north beyond Arras they were striking their 
second tremendous blow and had overrun Armentieres 
and were rushing on toward Calais and the Channel. 

Gerry strode on with consciousness of these events 
almost physically pressing upon him. In their presence, 
what was he with his prejudices and passions, what was 
that girl who had seared his lips when he pressed them 
against her fingers so that still for many moments after- 
wards his lips burned and tingled? If she was a German 


GERRY’S PROBLEM 


243 


spy who had been deluding and playing with him, to per- 
mit her to proceed now might work further catastrophe 
incalculable; whereas were she what he believed — yes; 
he believed — she could do no good but must merely 
destroy herself if allowed to go on. Had he any choice 
but to take the only action which could prevent her ? 

Ruth had waited alone in the little parlor after he had 
gone, with her left hand clasped protectingly over the 
fingers which he had kissed; protectingly she kept that 
clasp while, standing at the window, she had watched his 
figure disappear in the darkness of the street of the Holy 
Fathers. Her fingers were hot like his lips; and while 
that heat still was strong, she brought her hand to her 
cheek and pressed it there. 

That night nothing else occurred; nor upon the next 
day and night, nor during the following week did Ruth 
hear from Gerry as to what he had done about her; and 
she encountered nothing to indicate his decision until, 
calling again about her request for travel in Switzerland, 
suddenly she found permission granted, whereupon she 
took the first train for the east of France and the next 
morning passed the border into Switzerland. Accordingly 
it was in the shadow of Mount Pilatus that she read in a 
Bern newspaper that three days previously the American 
ace, Gerry Hull, had been shot down while flying over the 
German lines ; but that his companions in the flight, who 
had returned, reported that, though falling in enemy ter- 
ritory, he seemed to have succeeded in making some sort 
of a landing; so it was possible that he was not killed but 
might be a prisoner in the hands of the Germans. 


CHAPTER XVI 


INTO GERMANY 


HE little Republic of Switzerland, always one of 



JL the most interesting spots in the world, became dur- 
ing this war a most amazing and anomalous country. 
Completely surrounded by four great powers at war — 
and itself peopled by citizens each speaking the tongue of 
one or another of its neighbors and each allied by blood 
with one or with two or with three, or, perhaps, with all — 
the Swiss Confederation suffered a complex of passions, 
sympathies, and prejudices quite beyond possible parallel 
elsewhere. And, as everyone knows, the Swiss Republic 
during the four years of the war, successfully persisted in 


peace. 


Peace! What a strange condition in which to live, 
Ruth wondered with herself as she encountered the 
astonishments on every hand when she had crossed the 
border. She had been in a country at war for not quite 
three months — unless you nominated America from 
April, 1917, to January, 1918, a nation at war. Ruth did 
not. As she thought of her life before she took ship for 
France, the date of America’s declaration of a state of 
war with the Imperial German government was not fixed 
in the fiber of her feelings as were many other days before 
the date of that declaration — the September 6 of the 
Marne, the May 7 of the Lusitania, the glorious weeks of 


INTO GERMANY 


245 


the defense of Verdun. The war declaration of April 6, 
1917, seemed now to Ruth but a sort of official notifica- 
tion of the intentions of the American people which since 
then had only continued to develop. That home country 
which she had left in the last days of January was not 
nearly so different from its peace-time self as war-time 
France had proved distinct from war-time America. 

Certainly Ruth’s life had run on almost unchanged by 
the American declaration of war, save for the strengthen- 
ing of her futile, stifled passions. But that day in January, 
which had embarked her for France, had ushered her 
into a realm which demanded dealings in realities which 
swiftly had made all before seem illusory and phantasma- 
gorical. 

The feeling of dreamland incredulity that she, Ruth 
Alden, could actually be experiencing those gloriously 
exciting days upon the Ribot and following her arrival in 
France had been supplanted by sensations which made it 
seem that these last weeks had been the only real ones in 
her life. When she thought of her old self — of that 
strange, shadowy, almost substanceless girl who used to 
work in a Madison Street real estate office for Sam Hilton 
— it was her life in Chicago which had become incredible. 
She did not, therefore, forget her own home; on the con- 
trary, her work which had been largely the gathering 
together of scattered family groups and the attempt to 
reestablish homes, had made her dwell with particular 
poignancy upon memories of the little house in Onarga 
where her mother and her sisters dwelt. Regularly Ruth 
had addressed a letter to her mother and dropped it in a 
post-box; she had dared tell nothing of herself or of her 


246 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


work or give any address by which anyone could trace 
her. She simply endeavored to send to her mother as- 
surance that she was well and in France. Obviously she 
could not receive reply from her mother; indeed, Ruth 
could have no knowledge that any of her letters ever 
reached home. She experienced the dreads which every 
loving person feels when no news can come; such experi- 
ence was only part of the common lot there in France; 
but it helped to remove her life at home further into the 
past. 

Switzerland, strangely and without warning, had un- 
done much that France and the battle zone had worked 
within Ruth ; the inevitable relaxing of the strain of work 
in a country at war had returned Ruth to earlier emotions. 
What was she, Ruth Alden, doing here alone in the Alps ? 
She was standing, as one in a dream, upon the quay before 
the splendid hotels of Lucerne and gazing over the blue, 
wonderful, mountain-mirroring waters of the Lac des 
Quatre Cantons. Off to the southwest, grand and rugged 
against the azure sky, rose the snow-capped peaks of 
Pilatus ; to the east, glistening and more smiling under the 
spring sun, lay the Rigi. The beauty and wonder of it 
was beyond anything which Ruth Alden could have 
known. Who was she that she was there? 

Then a boy came by with newspapers and she bought a 
German newspaper and one printed in French at Bern. 
It was this one which informed her, when she glanced 
down its columns, that Gerry Hull had been shot down, 
and, strangely — and mercifully, perhaps — this knowl- 
edge came not to the girl who, during the past months 
had been his friend, his close comrade during days most 


INTO GERMANY 


247 


recent; it seemed to come, somehow, only to a girl who 
lay awake early in the morning in a shabby room at an 
Ontario Street boarding house, a girl who day-dreamed 
about impossible happenings such as knowing Gerry Hull, 
but who soon must stir to go down to breakfast at the 
disorderly table in the ill-lit room below and then catch a 
crowded car for Sam Hilton’s office. 

Such was the work of peace and Pilatus and the Rigi 
and the images upon the lake. War — war which had 
become the only reality, the sole basis of being — miracu- 
lously had vanished. She passed through throngs speak- 
ing German and by other groups conversing in French; 
these stood side by side, neither one prisoner to the other; 
they had no apparent hostility or animosity. These people, 
in part at least, were German and French; but there 
beyond the border — Ruth gazed in the direction of 
Alsace — men of such sorts sprang at one another with 
bayonets ; and Gerry Hull had been shot down. 

Ruth searched the German newspaper for further 
word of him; she looked up a news-stand and bought 
several papers, both French and German. In some she 
discovered the same brief announcement of the fate of 
the American pilot; but no further information. But it 
was certain that he was dead or a prisoner — wounded, 
probably, or at least injured by the crash of his airplane 
in the “some sort of a landing” which he had succeeded 
in making. It had been “ some sort of a landing ” which 
he had made that time he was shot down when she had 
gone to him and helped him free. Tales of German treat- 
ment of their prisoners — tales which she could not doubt, 
having been told her by men who themselves had suffered 


248 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


— recurred to her and brought her out of this pleasant, 
peaceful Lethe from realities in which Lucerne, for a few 
hours, had let her live. Tension returned; and, with the 
tension, grief but not tears; instead, that determination 
imbued her which she had witnessed often enough in 
others, when loss of their own was made known to them. 
Gerry Hull, she thus knew, was her own ; and as she had 
seen men and women in France giving themselves for the 
general cause, and for one particular, personal vengeance, 
too, so Ruth thought of her errand into Germany no 
longer as solely to gather information for the army but 
to find and free Gerry Hull, if he was a prisoner; and if 
he was killed, then to take some special, personal ven- 
geance for him. 

She had come to Lucerne — ostensibly- — to rest and to 
recuperate; and Mrs. Mayhew had given her letters to 
friends who were staying at one of the large hotels. Ruth 
had registered at the same hotel and a Mrs. Folwell, an 
American, had taken Ruth under her chaperonage. Ruth’s 
name, upon the hotel register, of course stood as Cynthia 
Gail ; and as Miss Gail, she met other guests in the hotel, 
which was one of those known as an “allied hotel” in 
the row of splendid buildings upon the water front devoted 
to the great Swiss peace and war industrie des Strangers. 
The majority of its guests, that is, designated themselves 
as English or French, Italian or American — whatever in 
fact they might be. The minority laid claim to neutral 
status — Norwegian, Danish, Hollandish, Swedish, Span- 
ish. But everyone recognized that in this hotel, as in all 
the others, the Germans and Austrians possessed repre- 
sentatives among the guests as well as among the servants. 


INTO GERMANY 


249 


“It is the best procedure,” Mrs. Folwell said half 
seriously to Ruth upon her arrival, “ to lay out all your 
correspondence upon your table when you leave the room 
so that it may be examined, in your absence, with the least 
possible disturbance. They will see it anyway.” 

Ruth was quite willing. Indeed, she was desirous of 
advertising, as quickly as possible, the presence of 
“Cynthia Gail.” She had taken the trouble to learn a 
simple device, employing ordinary toilet powder and pin 
perforations through sheets of paper, which would dis- 
close whether the pages of a letter had been disturbed. 
Accordingly she prepared her letters, and, merely locking 
them in her bureau drawer, she left them in her room. 
Returning some hours later, and unlocking the drawer, 
she found all her letters apparently undisturbed; but the 
powder and the perforation proved competent to evidence 
that secret examination had been made. 

Of course examination might have been at the hands of 
allied agents ; for Ruth did not imagine that the Germans 
and Austrians alone concerned themselves with war-time 
visitors to Switzerland ; but she felt sure that the Germans 
had made their search also. 

After breakfast the next morning Ruth met a man of 
twenty-eight or thirty — tall, reddish-haired, and with 
small gray eyes by name Christian Wessels, known as a 
Norwegian gentleman who had made himself agreeable 
to the Americans at the hotel. He was an ardent admirer 
of American policies and could repeat verbatim the state- 
ment of American war aims given by President Wilson to 
Congress three months before. He was a young man of 
culture, having graduated from the Swedish University of 


250 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


Upsala and was now corresponding with the University 
of Copenhagen. He proved to be a man of cosmopolitan 
acquaintance who had visited London, New York, San 
Francisco. He spoke English perfectly; and he nursed 
profound, personal antipathy to Germany as his family 
fortunes had suffered enormously through the torpedoing 
of Norwegian ships; moreover, he himself had been 
traveling from England to Bergen when his ship was 
destroyed and he had been exposed to winter weather in 
an open boat for five days before being picked up. He 
was only now recuperating from the effects of that ex- 
posure, meanwhile carrying on certain economic studies 
to guide trade relations after the war. 

His method of recuperation, Ruth observed, was to eat 
as heavily and as often as occasions permitted; he was a 
sleek, sensuous young man, ease-loving and, by his own 
account, a connoisseur of the arts. He talked informa- 
tively about painting, as about politics. Ruth did not like 
him ; but when she encountered him as she was wandering 
about alone gazing at the quaint houses in the interior of 
the old town, she could not be too rude to him when he 
offered himself as a guide. 

“ You have seen the Kapellbriicke, Miss Gail ? ” 

“Yes; of course,” Ruth said. 

“And the historical paintings ? You understand them ? ” 

“Yes,” Ruth asserted again. 

“To what do they refer?” 

“ I don’t know,” Ruth admitted, and accompanied him, 
in no wise offended, back to the old bridge over the Reuss ; 
then to the Muhlenbriicke with its Dance of Death; next 
he took her away to the Glacier Garden. 


INTO GERMANY 


251 


While they had been in the town with many people 
close by, his manner to Ruth had not been unusually 
offensive; but when they were away alone, he became 
more familiar and he took to uncovert appraisal of her 
face and figure. 

“ You are younger than I had expected,” he commented 
to her, apropos of nothing which had gone before but his 
too steady scrutiny of her face and her figure. 

“ I did not know that you expected anything in regard 
to me,” Ruth said. “ Mrs. Folwell did not know I was 
coming until I arrived.” 

“Ah! But your orders were given you — the thirtieth 
of last month, were they not ? ” 

Ruth stiffened. The thirtieth of last month was the 
day upon which she had arrived in Paris from Compiegne, 
the day upon which she had visited Charles Gail and, 
upon her return to the Rue des Saints Peres, had met 
George Byrne. Only one order had been given her that 
day; and that order had been given by the German who 
struck down Byrne. No one else had known about that 
order but herself and the German ; she had told Gerry and 
he might have told it to the French authorities. But she 
could not associate this sleek, sensuously unpleasant per- 
son, going by the name of Wessels, with anyone whom 
Gerry could have informed. She readily could connect 
him with the German who had for her attempted to strike 
Byrne dead; and she had been awaiting — impatiently 
awaiting — the German agent here at Lucerne who must 
accost her. 

“Yes; the thirtieth,” Ruth said. 

“ Then why did you not come sooner ? ” 


252 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“I applied at once for permission,” Ruth defended 
herself. “ It was delayed.” 

“Ah ! Then you had much difficulty ? ” 

“ Delay,” Ruth repeated. “ That was all ; though I may 
have been investigated.” 

“ You used Hull again to help you, I suppose.” 

“Yes, I used Hull,” Ruth said. 

Her heart was palpitating feverishly and the compres- 
sion in her throat almost choked her while she fought for 
outward calm. She was a German girl, she must remem- 
ber ; she had come from her great peril ; she had passed 
it; this was relief and refuge with one of her own before 
whom, at last, she could freely speak; for — though she 
dared not yet fully act upon the conviction — she no longer 
doubted at all that this Wessels was the enemy agent who 
was to control her henceforth. How much did he know 
about her, or about the girl she was supposed to be ? He 
knew that she had been ordered here on the thirtieth of 
last month; he knew that she had at times “ used ” Gerry 
Hull. 

“ We have him now, you know,” Wessels said, watch- 
ing her with his diagreeable, close scrutiny. 

“He’s captured?” Ruth said. She had remembered 
that she must have no real concern for the fate of an 
enemy pilot whom she had “ used.” 

“ Dead or captured ; anyway, we have him,” Wessels 
assured. He had continued to speak to her in English, 
though no one was near them; and if anyone did over- 
hear, the German tongue certainly would arouse no com- 
ment in Lucerne. “Mecklen seems to have only half- 
done your other flame.” 


INTO GERMANY 


253 


In his conversation at the hotel he had affected the use 
of slang to display his complete familiarity with English, 
Ruth had noticed ; and she caught his meaning instantly. 
Her other flame was George Byrne, of course; Mecklen, 
who had “only half-done” him, must be the German of 
the ruined house. 

“Byrne did not die?” Ruth asked. 

“Who’s Byrne?” Wessels returned. “The American 
infantry lieutenant?” 

“Yes.” 

“No; he did not die. Mecklen shut his mouth; but 
any day now it may open. When you did not come, I 
thought it had.” 

“ His mouth opened ? ” 

“Yes; we had better walk, perhaps. There are many 
more places of great interest. I shall show them to you.” 

He pointed Ruth ahead of him down a narrow way; 
and when she proceeded obediently, he followed. 

She welcomed the few moments offered for considera- 
tion. So George Byrne had not died ! That was a weight 
from her heart; and Wessels had only fragmentary facts 
about her, however he had received them. He knew that 
she had had another “ flame,” an American infantry lieu- 
tenant ; but Wessels had not known his name. 

“You were lucky to get here,” Wessels offered, com- 
ing up beside her when the way widened. Their direction 
was farther out from the city and they continued to be 
quite alone. “ But it cooks your chance to go back.” 

“To France, you mean?” 

“Where else?” 

She had thought of the possibility of being dispatched 


254 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


from Switzerland not into Germany, but back to France. 
If someone was to meet her at Lucerne who could take 
complete report upon the matters which she had been 
supposed to observe, the logical action would be to return 
her to work again behind the allied lines. Her original 
instructions, received in Chicago, had only implied — 
they had not directly stated — that she was to go on into 
Germany; but she had clung to the belief that she would 
go on. And now the failure of Mecklen to fully do his 
work with Byrne had settled that doubt for Ruth; for 
with Byrne alive and likely at any day to “open his 
mouth,” obviously the Germans would not order her into 
the hands of the French. 

“We may use you in Russia or Greece; but not France 
for the present, or even Italy,” Wessels said. “ But first 
you can visit home, if you like.” 

He meant the Fatherland, home of the girl whom he 
believed Ruth to be ; and Ruth knew that she had come to 
the crisis. If the fragmentary facts which had been 
forwarded to this man comprised any account of the girl 
whom the Germans in Chicago had meant to locate and 
whom they had failed to find when they entrusted their 
mission to Ruth, she was stopped now. If not . . . . 

“ I’d like to look in at the old home,” Ruth said. 

“ Where is it ? What town ? ” 

“My grandfather lived near Losheim.” 

“Where is that?” 

“ It is a tiny town beyond Saarlouis ; near the Hoch 
Wald.” 

“ Oh, yes ; I know. What is your name?” 

“ Luise Brun,” Ruth said. There was a German girl 


INTO GERMANY 


255 


of that name who had lived in Onarga; Ruth had gone to 
high school with her and had known her well. During 
the early days of the war, Luise had told Ruth about her 
relatives in Germany — her grandfather, who had lived 
near Losheim until he died the winter before, and her two 
cousins, both of whom had been killed fighting. Ruth did 
not resemble Luise Brun in any way; and she did not 
imagine that she could go to Losheim and pass for Luise ; 
but when questioned about herself, she had far more 
detailed knowledge of Luise’s connections to borrow for 
her own use than she had had of Cynthia Gail’s. 

Wessels, however, appeared less interested in Ruth’s 
German relatives than in herself. “You have been in 
America most of your life?” he asked. 

“When I was a baby I was brought to Losheim and 
again when I was a little girl,” Ruth said. “ My father 
and mother never forgot the Fatherland.” 

“Of course not,” Wessels accepted, impatient of this 
loyal protestation and desirous to return to the more per- 
sonal. “I was saying you are much like an American 
girl. American girls, I must admit, attract me.” 

He began speaking to her suddenly in German; and 
Ruth replied in German as best she could, conscious that 
her accent was far from perfect. 

It appeared to pass with him, however, as the sort of 
pronunciation to be expected from a girl reared in 
America. 

“How old are you now, Luise?” he questioned famil- 
iarly. 

“Twenty-five.” 

“ Yet ernes madchen, I warrant.” 


256 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“ I am not married, Herr Baron,” Ruth assured, 
employing the address to one of title. Either he was a 
possessor of baronial rank and pleased with the recogni- 
tion of the fact, or the assignment of the rank was grati- 
fying and he did not correct her. 

‘‘And in America you have no sweetheart of your own 
— other than your ‘ flames ? ’ ” 

He spoke the slang word in English, referring to Byrne 
and to Gerry Hull, with both of whom, as he believed, she 
had merely played. 

“No one, Herr Baron,” Ruth denied, but colored 
warmly. He took this flush for confession that she was 
hiding an attachment ; and he laughed. 

“ No matter, Luise; he is not here.” 

He was indulgently more familiar with her — a von 
something or other, admitting pleasure with the daughter 
of a man of no rank who had emigrated to America. 
Ruth brought up the business between them to halt further 
acceleration of this familiarity. 

“ I am to make my report to you, Herr Baron ? ” 

“ Report ? Ah, yes ! No ; of course not. Why should 
you make report here now ? It is simply trouble to record 
and transmit it. You are not going back to France, I said, 
did I not?” 

“Yes.” 

“ Then the report will be tomorrow.” 

“Where, Herr Baron?” 

“Where I take you to — headquarters.” 

Ruth went weak and gasped in spite of herself. She 
had thought that she was prepared to meet any fate ; but 
now she knew that she had built upon encountering her 


INTO GERMANY 


257 


risks more gradually. To be taken to “ headquarters ” — 
das Hauptquartier — tomorrow ! And, though Gerry had 
warned her, and she had said that she had recognized and 
accepted every sort of danger, still she had not reckoned 
upon such a companion as this man for her journey. 

“ Ha, Luise ! What is the matter ? ” 

“When do we start, Herr Baron ?” 

“ The sooner the better; surely you are ready? ” 

“ Surely; I was thinking — ” she groped for excuse and 
could think of nothing better than, “What way do 
we go?” 

“By Basel and Freiburg.” 

“What time, if you please, Herr Baron?” 

“At eight o’clock the train is.” 

“ I would like to return now to the hotel, then.” 

He complied and, conversing on ordinary topics in 
English, they reentered the town. 

She had no arrangements to make. Wessels was to 
see to all necessary details. She could pack her traveling 
bags in a few minutes; and she dared not write to any- 
one of the matters now upon her mind. She desired 
to return to the hotel only to be alone; and, as soon as 
she had parted from Wessels, she shut herself in her 
room. 

Long ago — a period passed in incalculable terms of 
time — she had determined, locked alone in a room, to 
undertake proceeding into Germany. Her purpose from 
the first, and her promise to the soul of Cynthia Gail — 
the vindication which she had whispered to strengthen 
herself when she was writing to Cynthia’s parents, and 
George Byrne, and when she was receiving their letters, 


258 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


trading upon Cynthia’s mother’s friends — was that she 
was to go into Germany. 

It must be at tremendous risk to herself ; but she always 
had recognized that; she had said to Gerry that she 
accepted certain death — and worse than death — if first 
she might have her chance to do something. Well, she 
might have her chance. At any rate, there was nothing 
to be done but go ahead without futilely calculating who 
Wessels actually was, what he truly believed about her, 
what he meant to do. Here was her chance to enter 
Germany. 

An hour later she descended to dinner with Mrs. Fol- 
well, and noticed Wessels dining at his usual table in 
another part of the room. Ruth informed Mrs. Folwell 
after dinner that she was starting that evening for Basel ; 
it was then almost train time and, after having her lug- 
gage brought down, she went alone to the train. 

Wessels also was at the train, but he halted only a 
moment beside her to give her an envelope with tickets 
and other necessary papers. Ruth entered a compartment 
shared by two women — German women or German- 
speaking Swiss, both of middle age, both suspicious of the 
stranger and both uneasily absorbed with their own 
affairs. No one else entered; the guard locked the door 
and the train proceeded swiftly, and with much screeching 
of its whistle, through darkened valleys, through pitch- 
black, roaring tunnels, out upon slopes, down into valleys 
again. 

Late at night the two women slept. Ruth tried to 
recline in a corner ; and repeatedly endeavored to relax in 
sleep; but each time, just before the dissolution of slum- 


INTO GERMANY 


259 


ber, she started up stiff and strained. Dawn had not 
come when the women awoke and the train pulled into 
Basel. It was still dark when, after the halt at the city, 
all doors again were opened and everyone ordered to leave 
the cars. This was the German border. 

Ruth stepped out with the others and rendered up her 
luggage. She was aligning herself with the women await- 
ing the ordeal of the German examination, when Wessels 
appeared with a porter, who was bearing Ruth’s bags. 
He passed without halting or speaking to her; but a 
moment later a German official touched her arm and, 
pointing her to go on, he escorted her past the doors before 
which the others were in line for examination. He 
brought her to the train which was standing on the German 
side and showed her to an empty compartment, where her 
luggage lay in the racks. Ruth sat in the compartment 
watching the people — men and women — as they issued 
from the depot of examination; they went to different 
cars of the waiting train; but when anyone attempted to 
enter the compartment where Ruth sat, a guard forbade 
until Wessels reappeared, got in, and told the guard to 
lock the door. 

Immediately the train started. 

“ Welcome to the Fatherland, Liebchen!” said Wessels, 
drawing close beside Ruth as the car gathered speed and 
rushed deeper into Germany. 


CHAPTER XVII 


THE ROAD TO LAUENGRATZ 

R UTH moved from him and to the end of the seat. 
. He laughed and again edged up to her. 

“ Where are we bound ? ” Ruth asked. 

“ That’s up to you.” 

“How?” 

“I send you one place, if you cut up; a more pleasant 
one, if you do not.” 

“What are the two places?” 

“The first I may leave to your heated imagination; 
the other — it is quite pretty, I assure you. Particularly 
in the spring, with all nature budding to increase. I own 
it — in the Schwarz wald, near Biberach. You know the 
Schwarzwald ? ” 

“ No,” Ruth said. 

“Indeed; it is not so far from Losheim.” 

He put a taunt into his tone — confident, mocking rail- 
lery; and Ruth knew that he had discovered her; she 
recognized that from the very first, probably, he had 
known about her and that she had never deceived him. 
Whether he had received information prior to her appear- 
ance that she was not to be trusted, or whether she had 
betrayed herself to him, she could not know; and now 
it scarcely mattered. The fact was that he was aware 
that she was not of the Germans and that he had brought 
260 


THE ROAD TO LAUENGRATZ 


261 


her into Germany with power to punish her as might 
appeal to him. 

“Then you do not know Lauengratz ? ” he went on. 

“No,” Ruth said. 

“ You do not call me Herr Baron now, Liebchen he 
reproached, patting her face. 

Ruth made no reply but the futile movement of slip- 
ping to the cushions opposite, where he permitted her to 
sit alone, contenting himself by leaning back and smirking 
at her. 

He continued to speak to her in English, except for his 
native liebchens, to show off his perfect familiarity with 
her language. For he entirely abandoned all pretense 
of believing her anything but American. Near Lauen- 
gratz, he informed her, was his favorite estate, where, 
when he wished, even the war would not unpleasantly 
intrude; he trusted that she would have the good sense 
to wish to visit Lauengratz. 

Dawn was brightening, and Wessels — Ruth did not 
yet know his true name — switched off the lights in the 
compartment, lifted the curtains and motioned to the 
right and ahead, where, along the length of Baden, lay the 
wooded hills of his Schwarzwald — the Black Forest. 
The gray light, sweeping over the sky, showed Ruth the 
wooded slopes reaching down toward the Rhine, which 
had formed the Swiss-German boundary at Basel, but 
which now flowed almost due north between the German 
grand duchy of Baden and the German Imperial Territory 
of Alsace, within the western edge of which now ran 
the French and American battle line. 

Four railroads, Ruth knew, reached from Basel into 


262 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


Germany — one west of the Rhine to Muhlhausen; one 
almost due east and up the river valley to the Rhine- 
fa.ll ; one northeast to Tedtnau; the other north and 
parallel with the Rhine to Freiburg and Karlsruhe. The 
train evidently was traveling this last road with the Rhine 
valley dimly in sight to the west. There had come to Ruth 
the wholly irrational sensation that Germany, when at 
last seen, must appear a land distinct from all others; 
but nothing in this quiet countryside, which was disclosing 
itself to greater and greater distance under the brighten- 
ing dawn, was particularly alarming or peculiar. She 
viewed a fair and beautiful land of forest, and farm, and 
tiny, neat villages very like the Swiss, and with not so 
many soldiers in evidence about them as Ruth had noticed 
upon the Swiss side of the frontier. 

Perhaps it was the appearance of this fair, quiet coun- 
tryside which spared Ruth from complete dismay; per- 
haps, deep within her, she had always realized that her 
venture must prove inevitably fatal, and this realization 
now controlled her reactions as well as her conscious 
thought; perhaps she was one of those whom despair 
amazingly arms with coolness and resource. 

“ I will go with you to Lauengratz,” Ruth replied. 

“ That’s good ! ” He patted the seat beside him. “ Come 
back here now.” 

Ruth recognized that she must obey or he would seize 
her; so she returned to the other seat and suffered his 
arm about her. 

“You do not recall me, Liebchen?” he asked in- 
dulgently. 

He referred, obviously, to some encounter previous to 


THE ROAD TO LAUENGRATZ 


263 


their very recent meetings in Lucerne. Ruth could recol- 
lect no such occasion, but she feared to admit it lest she 
offend his vanity. And, indeed, now that he suggested 
that they had met before, his features became to her, not 
familiar, but it seemed that she had seen him before. 

“ Didn’t I see you in Paris, Herr Baron ? ” she ventured 
boldly. 

“ In Paris precisely,” he confirmed, boastfully. 

“ I would have placed you, if I had thought about the 
possibility of your having been in Paris,” Ruth explained. 

“Ah! Why should I not have been there? A Nor- 
wegian gentleman, shipwrecked from a vessel torpedoed 
by the horrid Huns!” He laughed, self-flatteringly, and 
squeezed Ruth tighter. “A kiss, Liebchen! I swear, if 
you are a loyal girl, s.urely you’ll say I deserve a kiss ! ” 

He bent hjs head to take his reward ; and Ruth, unable 
fully to oppose him, contented herself with turning her 
cheek, avoiding touch of his lips upon hers. It satisfied 
him, or he was in such excellent humor with himself 
that he let it content him for the moment. 

The loathing which his embrace stirred within her and 
the helpless fury for repulse of him called clear images 
from Ruth’s subconsciousness. 

“About two weeks ago — ” she began. 

“A week ago Thursday, Liebchen ” 

“ You brought a child for clothing to the relief rooms 
where I was working. I waited upon you.” 

“And following your excellent explanation of your 
wonderful work, Liebchen, I gave you — ” He halted to 
permit her to recount his generosity. 

“Two hundred francs, Herr Baron.” 


264 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“Ah! l You do recollect. That deserves a kiss from 
me!” he cried, as though she had given the other. Accord- 
ingly, he rewarded her as before. “ You remember the 
next time ? ” 

“ It was not there,” Ruth said vaguely. “ It was upon 
the street.” 

“Quite so. The Boulevard Madeleine. There was a 
widow — a refugee — who halted you ” 

Ruth remembered and took up the account. “ She 
stopped me to try to sell a bracelet, a family treasure 

“Which you admired, I saw, Liebchen. 3 ' 

“ It was beautiful, but quite beyond my means to buy — 
at any fair price for the poor woman,” Ruth explained. 

“ So I purchased it ! ” He went into a pocket and pro- 
duced the bracelet. “ Put it on, Liebchen! ” he bid, him- 
self slipping it over her hand. “ Now another kiss for 
that!” 

He took it. 

“ I did not know you were honoring me with your atten- 
tions all that time, Herr Baron.” 

“ Oh, no trouble, Liebchen; a pleasure, I assure you. 
Besides, with more than your prettiness you piqued 
curiosity. You see, I received word in Paris when I am 
there before — a few months ago — that we can confi- 
dently employ one who will appear as Cynthia Gail. The 
word came from Chicago, I may tell you, quite round- 
about and with some difficulty. Before we learn more 
about you — well, Mecklen took it upon himself to do you 
a little turn, it seems.” 

Ruth merely nodded, waiting. 

“ Then a correction arrives from America, laying bare 


THE ROAD TO LAUENGRATZ 


265 


an extraordinary circumstance, Liebchen. Our people 
in Chicago sent us in January one Mathilde Igel, and now 
they have ascertained beyond any possible doubt that two 
days before they dispatched Mathilde to Paris, she has 
been interned in America. Who, then, have our Chicago 
people sent to us and advised us to employ — who is this 
Cynthia Gail ? You would not need to be pretty to pique 
curiosity now, would you, Liebchen?” 

He petted her with mocking protectiveness as he spoke ; 
and Ruth, recoiling, at least had gained from him explana- 
tion of much about which she had been uncertain. The 
Germans in Chicago, plainly, had made such a mistake 
as she had supposed and had been long in discovering it ; 
longer, perhaps, in communicating knowledge of it to 
Paris. But it had arrived in time to destroy her. Herr 
Baron gratuitously continued his explanation. 

“ So I took it upon me, myself, to have a squint at our 
Cynthia and I got my good look at you, Liebchen ! What 
a pretty girl — how do you Americans say it ? A dazzler ; 
indeed, a dazzler! What a needless pity to add you to 
the total of destruction, already too great — you so young 
and innocent and maidenly ? I have never been in favor 
of women’s intrusion in war; no, it is man’s business. 
For women, the solacing of those who fight — whether 
with sword or by their wits behind the enemy’s lines! 
Not so, Liebchen?” 

It was broad daylight — a sunny, mild morning amid 
wooded hills and vales with clear, rushing streams, with 
the Rhine Valley lost now to the west as the railroad swept 
more closely to the Black Forest. The train was slowing 
and, as it came to halt before a little countryside station, 


266 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


Wessels took his arm from about Ruth and refrained, 
for a few moments, from petting her; he went so far, 
indeed, as to sit a little away from her so that anyone 
glancing into the compartment would see merely a man 
and a girl traveling together. Mad impulses had over- 
whelmed Ruth when she felt the train to be slowing — 
impulses that she must be able to appeal to whoever 
might be at the station to free her from this man; but 
sight of those upon the platform instantly had cooled her. 
They were soldiers — oxlike, servile soldiery who leaped 
forward when, from a compartment ahead, a German 
officer signaled them for attention ; or they were peasant 
women and old men, only more unobtrusive and submis- 
sive than the soldiers. Appeal to them against one of 
their “ gentlemen ” and one who, too, undoubtedly was 
an officer ! The idea was lunacy ; her sole chance was to 
do nothing to offend this man while he flattered himself 
and boasted indulgently. 

The train proceeded. 

He put his arm about Ruth again. “ So I took upon 
myself the responsibility of saving you, Liebchen! You 
have yet done us no harm, I say; you mean us harm, of 
course. But you have not yet had the opportunity.” 

Ruth caught breath. He did not know, then, of her 
betrayal of De Trevenac;? Or was he merely playing with 
her in this as in the rest? 

“What is it, Liebchen?” he asked. 

“ Nothing/’ 

“ So I say to myself, I can let her go on and blunder 
across our border in some way and, of course, surely be 
shot; or I may take a little trouble about her myself and 


THE ROAD TO LAUENGRATZ 


267 


spare her. You do not make yourself overthankful, 
Liebchen” 

“ I am trying to, Herr Baron.” 

“A kiss, darling, to your better success ! ” He gave it. 
“ Now I will have you compose yourself. A few more 
kilometers and the next stop is ours. Lauengratz is not 
upon the railroad ; it is not so modern, nor is my family 
so new as that.” 

He gazed out complacently while the train ran the few 
kilometers swiftly. It drew into a tiny woodland station 
of the sort which Ruth had frequently observed — a depot 
with switch tracks serving no visible community, but with 
a traveled highway reaching back from it toward a town 
hidden within the hills. No one waited here but the 
station master and a man in the uniform of a military 
driver, who stood near a large touring car. He was gazing 
at the train windows and, seeing Wessels, he saluted. 
He came forward as the train stopped and, when the com- 
partment door was opened, he took Wessels’ traveling bag. 

“ Those in the racks, too,” Wessels directed curtly in 
German. Those were Ruth’s; and she shrank back into 
the corner of the seat as the man obediently took them 
down. Wessels stepped out upon the platform and turned 
to Ruth. 

No one else was leaving the train at that station ; indeed, 
the door of no other compartment opened. There was no 
one to whom Ruth might appeal, even if appeal were pos- 
sible. Wessels stood patiently in the doorway; behind 
him rose quiet, beautiful woodland. 

“Come,” he commanded Ruth, stretching a hand 
toward her. 


268 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


She arose, neglecting his hand, and stepped from the 
train. The guard closed the door behind her ; immediately 
the train departed. The station master — an old and 
shrunken man — approached, abjectedly, to inquire 
whether Hauptmann von Forstner had desires. Herr 
Hauptmann disclaimed any which he required the station 
master to satisfy; and the old man retired swiftly to the 
kiosk at the farther end of the platform. 

The driver, who had finished securing the luggage 
behind his car, opened the door of the tonneau and waited 
there at attention. 

“Welcome to Lauengratz, gnadiges Fraulein.” Von 
Forstner dropped the insulting liebchens to employ his 
term of respectful and gallant address; and before the 
soldier-servant he refrained from accents of too evident 
irony. Ruth’s position must be perfectly plain to the man, 
she thought ; but it pleased the master to pretend that he 
concealed it. 

She made no reply ; she merely stood a moment longer 
gazing about her to get her bearings. She had no con- 
scious plan except that she recognized that she was to 
be taken into some sort of duress from which she must 
attempt to escape; and if she succeeded she would require 
memory of landmarks and directions. Von Forstner’s 
eyes narrowed as he watched her and divined what was 
passing through her mind; but he pretended that he 
did not. 

“Have I not said it was beautiful here?” he asked. 

“ It is very beautiful,” Ruth replied and, as he motioned 
to her, she preceded him into the car and sat upon the 
rear seat with him. 


THE ROAD TO LAUENGRATZ 


269 


The car, which was fairly new and in good condition, 
drove off rapidly. It evidenced to Ruth either that reports 
of the scarcity of motor cars in Germany had been exag- 
gerated or that Captain von Forstner was a person of 
sufficient importance to possess a most excellent vehicle 
from the vanishing supply. It followed a narrow but 
excellent road through forest for half a mile; it ran out 
beside cleared land, farm, and meadows, where a few cat- 
tle were grazing. A dozen men were working in a field — 
big, slow-moving laborers. 

Von Forstner observed that Ruth gazed at them. 
“ Russians,’’ he explained to her. “Some of my pris- 
oners.” 

He spoke as if he had taken them personally. “ I have 
had, at various times, also French and English and 
Canadians; and I expect some Americans soon. I have 
asked for some; but they have not appeared against us 
frequently enough yet for us to have a great many.” 

“ Still we have already not a few of you,” Ruth 
returned quietly. Her situation scarcely could become 
worse, no matter what she now said; and, as it turned 
out, von Forstner was amused at this defiance. 

“If they are much like the Canadians they will not be 
much good anyway,” he said. 

“ For fighting or farm work, you mean?” 

Von Forstner hesitated just a trifle before he returned, 
“They can stand nothing; they die too easily.” 

The car was past the fields where the Russians toiled 
and was skirting woodlands again; when fields opened 
once more quite different figures appeared — figures of 
women and of a familiarity which sent the blood choking 


270 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


in Ruth’s throat. They were French women and girls, 
or perhaps Belgians of the sort whom she had seen tilling 
free, French farms; but these were captives — slaves. 
And seeing them, Ruth understood with a flaming leap of 
realization what von Forstner had meant about the Rus- 
sians. They were captives also, and slaves ; but they had 
never known freedom. 

But to see these women slaves ! 

Von Forstner himself betrayed especial interest in 
them. He spoke sharply to the driver, who halted the car 
and signaled for the nearest of the slaves to approach. 

“ Where are you from ? ” he questioned them in French. 
They named various places in the invaded lands ; most of 
them had been but recently deported and had arrived 
during von Forstner’s absence. Two of the group, which 
numbered eight, were very young — girls of sixteen or 
seventeen, Ruth thought. They gazed up at Ruth with 
wide, agonized eyes and then gazed down upon the 
ground. Ruth glanced to von Forstner and caught him 
estimating them — their faces, their figures, as he had 
estimated her own. She caught him glancing from them 
to herself now, comparing them; and her loathing, and 
detestation of him and of all that he was, and which he 
represented suddenly became dynamic. 

He did not see that; but one of the French girls, who 
had glanced up at her again, did see ; and the girl looked 
quickly down at once as though fearing to betray it. But 
Ruth saw her thin hands clenching at her sides and 
crumpling the rags of her skirt; and from this Ruth was 
first aware that her own hands had clenched and through 
her pulled a new tension. 


THE ROAD TO LAUENGRATZ 


271 


“ Go on,” von Forstner ordered his driver. 

The car sped along the turning road into woods; the 
road followed a stream which rushed down a tiny valley 
thirty or forty feet below. At times the turns gave 
glimpses far ahead and in one of these glimpses Ruth saw 
a large house which must be the Landgut — or the manor 
— of this German country-place. 

“ See! We are almost home, Liebchen !” Von Forst- 
ner pointed it out to her when it was clearer and nearer 
at the next turn. He had his hand upon Ruth again ; and 
the confident lust of his fingers set hot blood humming 
dizzily, madly in Ruth’s brain. The driver, as though 
responding to the impatience of his master, sent the car 
spinning in and out upon the turns of the road beside 
the brook. In two or three minutes more — not longer — 
the car would reach the house. Now the car was rushing 
out upon a reach of road abruptly above the stream and 
with a turn ahead sharper, perhaps, than most. In spite 
of the speed the driver easily could make the turn if unim- 
peded; but if interfered with at all . . . . 

The plan barely was in Ruth’s brain before she acted 
upon it. Accordingly, there was no chance for von Forst- 
ner to prevent it ; nor for the driver to oppose her. She 
sprang from her seat, seized the driver’s right arm and 
shoulder, as he should have been turning the steering- 
wheel sharply; and, for the necessary fraction of a sec- 
ond, she kept the car straight ahead and off the road over 
the turn. 

When a motor car is going over, crouch down ; do not 
try to leap out. So a racing driver, who had been driving 
military cars in France, had drilled into Ruth when he 


272 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


was advising her how to run the roads back of the battle 
lines. Thus as the car went over she sprang back and 
knelt on the floor between the seats. 

The driver fought for an instant, foolishly, to bring the 
car back onto the road; then he flung himself forward 
and down in front of his seat. Von Forstner, who had 
grabbed at Ruth too late, had been held standing up when 
the car turned over. He tried to get down. Ruth could 
feel him — she could not look up — as he tumbled half 
upon her, half beside her. She heard him scream — a 
frightful, hoarse man's scream of mad rage as he saw 
he was caught. Then the car was all the way over; it 
crushed, scraped, slid, swung, turned over; was on its 
wheels for a flash ; at least air and light were above again ; 
it pounded, smashed, and slid through brush, against small 
trees ; and was over once more. It ground and skewed in 
soft soil, horribly; cold water splashed below it. It set- 
tled, sucking, and stopped. 

The sound of water washing against metal; for a 
moment the hiss of the water on the hot engine; then only 
the gurgle and rush of the little brook. 

Ruth lay upon her back in the stream with the floor of 
the car above her; below her was von Forstner’s form, 
and about him were the snapped ribs of the top with the 
fabric like a black shroud. 

At first he was alive and his face was not under water; 
for he shouted frantic oaths, threats, appeals for help. 
Wildly he cursed Ruth; his back was broken, he said. 
He seemed to struggle at first, not so much to free him- 
self as to grasp and choke her. Then the back of the car 
dammed the water and it rose above his face. He coughed 


THE ROAD TO LAUENGRATZ 


273 


and thrashed to lift himself ; he begged Ruth to help him ; 
and, turning as far about as she could, she tried to lift 
his head with her hands, but she could not. The water 
covered him; and, after a few moments, he was quite 
still. 

The dam at the back of the car, which had caused the 
pool to rise that high, failed to hold the water much 
higher; it ran out of the sides of the car before it covered 
Ruth. It soaked her through; and the weight of the 
machine held her quite helpless. But she had air and 
could breathe. 

From the forward seat came no sound and no move- 
ment. The driver either had been flung out in one of 
the tumbles of the car or, like his master, he had been 
killed under it. Ruth could only wonder which. 

But someone was coming down the embankment from 
the road now; more than one person; several. Ruth 
could hear their movements through the underbrush. Now 
they talked together — timidly, it seemed, and at a little 
distance. Now they approached, still timidly and talking. 

These were men’s voices, but strange in intonations and 
in language. It was not German, or French, or any 
tongue with which Ruth was at all familiar. It must be 
Russian. The timid men were Russians — some of the 
slaves ! 

One of them touched the car and, kneeling, peered 
under it. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


THE MESSAGE IN CIPHER 

R UTH could see dull eyes in a big, stupid face. The 
„ man said something with the inflection of a ques- 
tion. She could not make out the words, but obviously 
he was asking if anyone was alive under the car. So 
Ruth answered. The face disappeared; and she heard 
consultation. Soon several men tramped in the water 
and thrust timbers under the side of the car and tilted it. 
Large, rough hands reached under and caught Ruth and 
pulled her out. 

She sank limp when the hands released her, gently 
enough, and laid her upon the sloping bank above the 
stream. The man who had rescued her had four com- 
panions, all of them Russians. They engaged themselves 
immediately in dragging out Captain von Forstner and 
then exploring under the car. But they found no one else. 
Ruth discovered the driver lying a rod or so beyond her 
and farther up the slope. Plainly he had been thrown out 
and the car had crushed him. The Russians had seen him 
before they had come to the car, and when Ruth made 
signs to them to go to the man they shook their heads, 
repeating a sentence which meant — she had no doubt — 
that the man was dead. They repeated the same words 
about von Forstner. 

Ruth struggled up, dizzily, to find herself battered and 
274 


THE MESSAGE IN CIPHER 


275 


with muscles bruised and strained; but she had escaped 
without broken bones or disabling injury. A German 
soldier, armed with a rifle, joined the group of Russians 
about Ruth. Evidently he was a guard who had been 
at some distance when the car went from the road. 

“You are much injured, gnddiges Frdulein ?” the 
soldier asked her solicitously and respectfully. 

“ Only a little, ” Ruth replied, collecting strength again 
and regaining clearness of thought. 

When the Russians first had come to her aid she had 
thought of them as helping her, as an American against 
the Germans ; but now she was cool enough to realize how 
absurd that idea was. These peasant slaves were not 
moved by any political emotions and, if they had been, 
they were incapable of recognizing her as an American 
and the possessor of any particular sympathy for them. 
She was to them a lady — a companion of a master who 
undoubtedly had mistreated them; but when they had 
found that master helpless they had been below any 
instincts of revenge upon him. They had considered his 
misfortune a lucky chance given them to perform some 
service which could win them favor, and now that the 
master was dead they sought that favor from the mistress. 

And much the same considerations governed the Ger- 
man guard. It was plain from his manner of address to 
her that he could not have witnessed the accident to the 
car, or at least he could not have observed that she had 
caused it. She was to him a friend of Hauptmann von 
Forstner, who had passed riding beside Herr Hauptmann 
— a lady, of the class of persons with whom Herr Haupt- 
mann associated and whose authority at all times and 


276 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


in all matters the private soldier was accustomed to 
accept. 

The authority which Ruth thus possessed was extremely 
local, of course; its realms might not run beyond the little 
leafy valley of the brook, and it surely was temporary; 
but locally and for the instant it was hers. 

“ You desire, gnadiges Fraulein,” the soldier asked her, 
“ that I stay here and send one of them, ,, he indicated the 
Russians, “ with word to the manor or that I go ? ” 

“You go,” Ruth directed, struggling up to her feet. 
“I am quite strong again and you can do nothing for 
Herr Hauptmann.” 

“No, gnadiges Fraulein, I can do nothing for Herr 
Hauptmann,” the soldier agreed. Of himself he was 
doubtful whether he should yet leave his gnadiges 
Fraulein, but he had been commanded, so he went. 

The Russians had withdrawn a little; and after the 
German soldier was gone Ruth stood alone, gazing down 
at von Forstner’s body. She had killed von Forstner and 
his servant. She had killed them in self-defense and by 
an act which might have destroyed her as well as them, 
yet horror shrank her as she saw them lying dead — horror 
which first had seized her at the idea of individually deal- 
ing in death that day long ago when she stood with Gerry 
in the parlor of the pension upon the Rue des Saints Peres, 
and when he had told her that the French had taken Louis 
de Trevenac upon her information, and were to execute 
him. 

If she had killed these men solely to save herself, she 
must cast herself down beside them. But she had not! 
That sudden, mad deed which she had just performed — ■ 


THE MESSAGE IN CIPHER 


277 


and in the consequences of which she was just beginning 
to be involved — sprang not from self-defense. It was 
not sense of escape from personal violation which at this 
moment chiefly swayed her; it was a sensation of requital, 
in petty part, for the savageries of that sweep through 
Belgium of which she had heard four years ago; requital 
for the Lusitania; for Poland and Serbia; for the bomb- 
ing of Paris and for that long-range gun whose shells she 
had seen bursting; for Grand’mere Bergues’ daughter 
and for the other refugees upon the Mirevaux road; for 
the French girls and women in slavery only a mile from 
here; for .... 

She raised her hands to her hair, which was wet, as 
she was wet all over ; she arranged her hair and her cloth- 
ing as decently as she could. A motor car was coming 
upon the road from the manor. It stopped directly above, 
and the soldier and a man in civilian clothes got out ; the 
driver of the car remained in his seat and maneuvered to 
turn the car about in the narrow road. 

The man in civilian clothes, who came down the slope 
toward the stream, was forty or forty-five years old, 
Ruth thought. He was a large man, florid-faced and 
mustached, with the bearing not of servant but of a 
subordinate — an overseer of some sort, Ruth guessed, 
or perhaps a resident manager of the estate. 

“ Good morning, gnddiges Fraulein,” he saluted Ruth, 
breathless from his haste and agitation. “ I am Dittman,” 
he made himself known. “What a terrible accident has 
occurred ! Herr Hauptmann is dead, they say ; and Josef, 
too ! ” He gave barely a glance toward the body of the 
chauffeur, but knelt at once beside von Forstner’s. 


278 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“ They are both dead,” Ruth said quietly. It was plain 
that von Forstner had been Dittman’s master and that 
Dittman, for the moment at least, accepted Ruth as a 
friend of von Forstner’s, as the soldier had. 

“ What shall I order done? ” Dittman appealed to Ruth, 
rising. 

“ Take Hauptmann von Forstner’s body to the house, 
of course,” Ruth directed. “Who is at the house?” she 
inquired. 

“ Besides the servants, this morning only Herr 
Adler.” 

“Who is Herr Adler?” 

“Why, he is Hauptmann von Forstner’s secretary.” 

“Then why did he not himself come at once?” 

“Word arrived that Herr Hauptmann was dead,” 
Dittman explained. “ Herr Adler did not think that you 
would require him here, gnadiges Franlein. Since Herr 
Hauptmann was dead it was more necessary than ever 
for Herr Adler to remain at the house. Oberst-Lieutenant 
von Fallenbosch communicates by telephone at this time 
in the morning; immediately he must be informed.” 

“ Of course,” Ruth said. 

She was aware that Dittman was observing her more 
and more curiously, not so much because of her questions 
and of her ignorance of the household affairs of Captain 
von Forstner, she thought, as because of her accent. Ditt- 
man apparently was not surprised that the lady companion 
of his master did not know about Adler; and even the 
fact that she spoke German with an undisguisable foreign 
accent did not stir suspicion, but only curiosity. Ruth 
apparently had taken the right tone with this puffing under- 


THE MESSAGE IN CIPHER 


279 


ling by offering no explanations whatever about herself 
and by demanding them of others. 

“ You are wet, gnadiges Fraulein,” he reminded her 
solicitously. “I brought the motor car for you. If you 
will proceed I shall see to all things for Herr Hauptmann.” 

“Hauptmann von Forstner carried upon himself cer- 
tain papers for which I now must be responsible,” Ruth 
returned to Dittman. 

“Ah, yes; of course, gnadiges Fraulein.” 

“ You may obtain them for me.” 

Dittman knelt again, obediently, and carefully and 
methodically went through von Forstner’s pockets. A 
few minutes before, when Ruth had been alone but for the 
Russian slaves, she had realized that she ought to obtain 
the papers in those pockets, but her revulsion at making 
the search had halted her. Now that proved altogether 
fortunate. Her fate here hung upon little things ; and one 
of those trifles which supported her, undoubtedly, was that 
she had waited for this Dittman before allowing dis- 
turbance of any of von Forstner’s effects. 

Dittman gathered together everything from the pockets 
— money, keys, penknife, cigarette case, revolver, and 
memorandum book, besides two thick packets of folded 
papers ; and he offered all to Ruth, who accepted only the 
packets and the memorandum book. Dittman assisted her 
to climb the slope to the waiting car. 

“ My bags, Dittman,” Ruth said to her escort when she 
was seated. They had been held fairly well away from 
the water by the position of the wrecked car; and there 
was more than a chance that the leather had kept dry 
some of the clothing within. Ruth did not know what lay 


280 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


before her but she could meet it better in fresh garments. 
Dittman ordered one of the Russians to bring up her bags 
and place them in the car. 

As it sped away to the south Ruth sat back alone in the 
rear seat. Evidently she had been expected at the manor 
house; from the border or, perhaps, from Basel or from 
Lucerne Captain von Forstner had warned his house- 
hold that he was bringing her with him. Had he de- 
scribed to his inferiors the relationship of his companion 
to him? Almost surely he had not. If they had arrived 
together, in the manner planned by von Forstner, his 
servants swiftly enough could have arrived at their own 
conclusions; but now that von Forstner was dead — 
accidentally, as all believed — matters lay so that his serv- 
ants might judge the nature of her association with their 
master by the manner in which Ruth bore herself. 

Oberst-Lieutenant von Fallenbosch, who communicated 
by telephone at this time in the morning, suggested perilous 
complications, but perils were all about her now, in any 
case. The bold course upon which she was embarked was 
— if you thought about it — safer, in reality, than any 
other. 

So Ruth steadied herself as the car, clearing the woods, 
ran beside open acres to a huge and old German manor 
house set baldly upon a slope above the stream. A man 
was walking upon the terrace before the door; he sighted 
the car and started quickly to meet it, but as the car sped 
up he returned to the terrace and stood upon the lower 
step at the edge of the drive. He was a short, broadly 
built but nervous little man, upwards of thirty, spectacled, 
and with thick hair cropped somewhat after the military 


THE MESSAGE IN CIPHER 


281 


fashion; but he was not in uniform and his bearing was 
that of student or professional man, rather than of the 
military. 

When the car stopped he did not wait for the driver or 
one of the servants, who now had come out upon the 
terrace, but he himself opened the door and stood back 
quickly, staring at Ruth anxiously and rubbing together 
his fat red hands. 

“ Herr Adler ? ” Ruth asked as she stood up. 

“Yes, gmdiges Fraulein. You have come from the 
captain ? ” 

Her drenched condition was witness to the fact, and 
Ruth observed that, besides, his little eyes sought the 
packets of papers and the memorandum book which she 
held. 

“ I have come from America and more recently from 
France,” Ruth said, stepping down. They were alone now 
as Adler walked with her across the terrace. “I have 
come from Lucerne with Captain von Forstner.” 

“Yes, gmdiges Fraulein , I know; I know. And he is 
dead, they tell me. It is true that he is dead ? ” 

“ He is dead,” Ruth confirmed. And she saw that the 
fact of von Forstner’s death bore far different conse- 
quences to Adler than to Dittman. The secretary was 
charged now with responsibilities which had been his 
master’s; it was these, more than the physical accident of 
von Forstner’s death, which overwhelmed and dismayed 
him. “But I have recovered his reports and personal 
memoranda,” Ruth assured. 

“Yes; yes. That is very fortunate.” 

“Which I shall go over with you as quickly as I can 


282 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


change to dry clothes, Herr Adler,” she continued. She 
did not know whether the secretary had been about to 
make demand for his master’s papers; if he had, she had 
anticipated him. “ Oberst-Lieutenant von Fallenbosch 
has telephoned ? ” Ruth asked. 

“ Ten minutes ago, gnadiges Fraulein” 

“Of course you told him that Captain von Forstner is 
dead.” 

“Of course.” 

“Well, what is he to do?” 

“ He is coming here at once.” 

“ That’s good,” Ruth managed, steadily enough. 
“ Where was he when he telephoned.” 

“At Offenburg, gnadiges Fraulein .” 

“ Then he will arrive in about an hour ? ” 

“At noon, he said. But first there is much,” Adler’s 
nervousness increased, “much to be made ready for him.” 

“ I will not delay,” Ruth promised. 

They had entered the hall — a large, dark hall with a 
wide, black stairway rising at the side. 

“ I shall send your bags instantly to your room, gnadiges 
Fraulein,” Adler assured. He halted, giving her over to 
a maid servant for guidance. “Show Fraulein Brun to 
her apartment,” Adler ordered. “ I shall send stimulant,” 
he added. 

So she was Fraulein Brun and she had been expected 
here ! Captain von Forstner had sent word that he was 
bringing her and had ordered her apartment prepared; 
and his advices, even to Adler, had ended with that. 

Ruth followed the maid into a bedroom and boudoir, 


THE MESSAGE IN CIPHER 


283 


where, a moment later, her bags were brought. Examina- 
tion proved that they had served to keep her packed 
clothing dry ; and, with the maid’s assistance, Ruth took 
of! her soaked garments. The maid took down her hair 
and brushed it out to dry ; another maid appeared with the 
stimulant which Adler had promised and also with hot 
broth and biscuit. Ruth took this gladly and felt stronger. 
She let herself relax, half dressed, in a chair while the 
maid fanned and brushed her hair. From the window 
she saw a car coming to the manor with von Forstner ’s 
body; a few moments later she heard the feet of bearers 
pass her room door. They appeared to take him into 
apartments just beyond — those which had been his own, 
undoubtedly. Ruth instructed the maid to do her hair 
and she would finish dressing. 

Dismissing the maid, she remained alone in the room. 
She had kept with her the papers which von Forstner had 
carried, and while she had been under observation she had 
refrained from examining them. Now she opened the 
packets and found that those papers which had lain inside 
were almost dry; and swiftly spreading them before her 
she saw that they appeared to be typewritten observations 
upon economic matters of the character which a neutral 
Norwegian gentleman might make. They must be, in fact 
— Ruth knew — cipher memoranda of very different 
matters ; they would probably not contain any summaries, 
for von Forstner could carry all summaries in his head. 
He would have committed to writing only details and 
items — some of them petty, taken by themselves, but 
others of more importance. They would have to do with 
conditions in France, but while meant for German inf or- 


284 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


mation their contents must carry quite as important advices 
for the allies, for they would betray the particular loca- 
tions with which the Germans were concerning themselves 
and thereby disclose the front of the next attack. 

Ruth sorted the pages over swiftly and, finding that 
their texts fell under nine heads, she removed the twenty- 
eight pages which were under five of these heads; the 
other twenty-three pages she restored to the two packets. 
She thrust the removed pages under her corset ; and, carry- 
ing the others in their wet packets, she left the room. 
Descending the wide, black stairs, she found Adler pacing 
the hallway as he had paced the terrace. 

He led her into a large, high, dark paneled, mullion- 
windowed room where old armor and battle maces stood 
upon the black walls above modern office filing cases and 
with an ancient carved table topped with glass and desk 
blotter; before this was an ordinary swivel chair. Adler 
motioned Ruth to this as he put out his hand for the 
packets. 

“The reports now, please, gnadiges Fraulein!” Adler 
asked. “A transcription immediately must be ready for 
Oberst-Lieutenant von Fallenbosch! He will not find it 
like talking with Hauptmann von Forstner; but we must 
do what we can ! ” 

Ruth handed him the packets and she sat down in the 
swivel chair while, on the other side of the glass table top, 
Adler spread out the sheets. Their number appeared to 
satisfy him; at least he questioned nothing, but, having the 
pages in order, he unlocked a small, flat drawer and took 
out three paper stencils. The apertures through the paper 
differed, Ruth saw, with each stencil. Adler laid them in 


THE MESSAGE IN CIPHER 


285 


order over the first three sheets, and, bending, read to him- 
self the words which remained in sight under the stencils. 
Ruth could not see what he read nor the brief transcript 
he made with pencil upon a pad. He shifted the stencils 
to the next three sheets, read the result again, made his 
transcript, and again shifted. 

Adler came to the end and gazed up at Ruth. The other 
women whom Hauptmann von Forstner had invited to 
Lauengratz and who had used those apartments above 
evidently had been of unquestionable loyalty, for the 
secretary, when he gazed up at this guest of his dead 
master, did not challenge her. He sought information to 
prepare himself for the visit of Oberst-Lieutenant von 
Fallenbosch, not half an hour away. 

“ Besides these, gnadiges Fraulein” he appealed. anxi- 
ously, “ did Herr Hauptmann make no verbal mention of 
other matters ? ” 

Ruth shook her head. " Personal matters between him 
and myself,” she said. “ But he did not go into the reports 
of others with me at all. In fact, he would not even receive 
my report ; since I was coming into Germany I could make 
it myself to Oberst-Lieutenant Fallenbosch. That would 
be safer, he said.” 

This true recital threw Adler into gesturing despair. 
“ Exactly; it is precisely what he would do ! It is safest; 
it is most discreet to put nothing, or as little as possible, 
upon paper. That is always his obsession ! So discreet ! 
When I say to him it is not always safer he laughs or tells 
me to mind my own business ! Discretion ! It is because 
he is so obsessed by it that he directs our secret service for 
the district. ‘Have merely an ordered mind, a good 


286 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


memory, Adler/ he always says to me, ' and nothing will 
be misplaced, nothing will get astray, nothing will be 
obtained by others/ 

“'Yes, Herr Hauptmann/ I say, 'but suppose some- 
thing happen to that ordered mind and that good memory ! 
What then ? ’ Ah ! He laughs at me and pats me on the 
back so indulgently. But where is that ordered mind; 
where now is that memory to which the most important 
things may be committed? Well, he is away from the 
trouble,” the secretary raged in his dismay. “ He can 
hear nothing which Oberst-Lieutenant von Fallenbosch 
may say of him. But I — I will get it. . . . Yet you 

can make your report to him. At least, that much may 
be added. You have come from where, Fraulein Brun? 
Which front?” he beseeched hopefully. 

“From Picardy,” Ruth said. “I had the honor to be 
assigned to Roisel and to attach myself, particularly, to 
the British Fifth Army.” 

“Ah ! I salute you, gnddiges Fraulein , and your com- 
rades for the wonderful work you have done. But the 
importance of that is past, Fraulein Brun! Since then 
where have you been ? ” 

“ My duty, as I interpreted it, was to retreat with the 
British; so I was swept back with them to Compiegne. 
Since then, as I explained to Herr Hauptmann, passport 
difficulties detained me in Paris.” 

“Then all from Reims to Soissons is in Herr Haupt- 
mann’s ordered mind! It is, as all the most essential 
would be, in his 'good memory’! And, by the latest, 
today the report was to start to great headquarters ! ” 

The secretary jerked about from Ruth and hurried 


THE MESSAGE IN CIPHER 


287 


back and forth across the room, head down and clapping 
his hands loudly together in his despair ; and Ruth, watch- 
ing him, sat stark. The importance of the Picardy front 
was past, he had said — that front where, in the tremen- 
dous assaults of March, the Germans had thrust their great 
salient between Amiens and Paris and where all the allies 
were working, day and night, strengthening their lines 
against a new attack ! The Flanders front, where still the 
German armies were hurling themselves toward the chan- 
nel? Adler did not even mention that. The “most 
essential” was the front from Reims to Soissons, all 
quiet now and one which — so far as Ruth knew — the 
allies expected to remain quiet and where they yet were 
unprepared for a great attack. 

But there the next tremendous assault must be coming; 
and it was so near that, by the latest, today report of 
conditions upon that front was to start to great head- 
quarters ! Well, whatever was written about that front 
Ruth had now in the papers folded tight against her body 
and what von Forstner had entrusted to his ordered mind 
was lost forever ! Keenly she watched Adler while, still 
striking his hands together in his helplessness, he strode 
swiftly up and down. 

He spun about to her suddenly, and for an instant Ruth 
believed he was about to challenge her. But the secretary 
could not yet reach suspicion of the comrade of his Herr 
Hauptmann and for whom Hauptmann von Forstner had 
instructed rooms to be made ready beside his own and who 
herself had completed the journey to Lauengratz alone 
and of her own will and bearing Herr Hauptmann’s 
papers. 


288 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“ You removed these yourself from Herr Hauptmann’s 
body?” 

“ No ; Dittman procured them for me. I was somewhat 
injured myself, you see,” she explained her neglect. “And 
a little faint, at first.” 

“Of course; of course! But Dittman is a thick skull! 
He might not have suspected where Herr Hauptmann 
might have concealed the most important memoranda ! ” 
Adler livened with hope. “And there were Russians, I 
understand, who first found you and dragged out Herr 
Hauptmann. They are mere brutes, incapable of under- 
standing anything. Nevertheless they may have meddled. 
I shall send and see and at once myself examine the body 
of Herr Hauptmann!” 

He turned about and gazed at his papers; he swept 
them together and into a drawer. The stencils, by which 
he had read the ciphers, went with them. “You will 
remain here, gnadiges Frdulein ” he half commanded, half 
requested, and he hastened from the room. 

Ruth delayed only the instant necessary to make certain 
that he had gone upstairs. Suspicion which now turned 
upon Dittman and upon the Russians swiftly must ap- 
proach her; moreover, the hour of arrival of Oberst- 
Lieutenant von Fallenbosch was almost here. By her 
stroke of boldness and of luck she had succeeded in tem- 
porarily overreaching the secretary whom she had found 
so unbalanced by the death of his superior. But she could 
not possibly hope to dupe von Fallenbosch. She must fail 
with him as miserably as she had failed with von Forstner. 
And to attempt with him and to fail involved, now, not 
only her own destruction but delivery into German hands 


THE MESSAGE IN CIPHER 


289 


of that most essential information which she had inter- 
cepted, and loss to the allies of the knowledge of German 
plans. 

She opened the drawer which Adler had just closed and 
she took out the sheets of von Forstner’s reports and the 
stencils. She went out into the hall and, finding it empty, 
she passed quickly to a door on the side of the house which, 
she believed, was not commanded from the windows of 
the room where Captain von Forstner’s body lay. In that 
direction, also, the forest lay nearer to the house ; Ruth 
went out and walked toward the trees. An impulse to 
run almost controlled her, but she realized that she must 
be in sight of servants, who might not question her stroll- 
ing out away from the house in the warm spring sunshine 
but who would immediately report anything which resem- 
bled flight. So she went slowly until she reached the 
forest; then she ran — wildly and breathlessly. 

She found a path, well marked and much used and easy 
to run upon. Other paths, almost overgrown, opened into 
it here and there. Ruth ran by the first few of these; 
then, choosing arbitrarily, she took one of the disused 
ways which twisted north — she noticed — through denser 
thickets of budding oaks and beeches; it ascended, too, 
bending back and forth up a mountainside which brought 
the darker boughs of the black firs drooping about her 
while, underfoot, the ground alternately became stony 
bare and soft with velvety cushions of pine needles. 

She stopped at last, exhausted and gasping ; her pulses 
were pounding so in her head that she scarcely could hear, 
and the forest on every side limited sight. But so far as 
she could see and as well as she could hear there was no 


290 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


alarm of anyone following her. It seemed absolutely 
still on the mountainside except for the movement of the 
noon breeze in the tree tops; now from somewhere far 
away and off to the right she heard the ring of an ax and, 
after a minute, the fall of a tree; now the sound of the ax 
again. 


CHAPTER XIX 


THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY 

R UTH sank down upon the ground in a warm, sunny 
spot where the trees were more scant than they had 
been below. They were dense enough, however, to shield 
her from sight of anyone in the valley, while they per- 
mitted a view down the mountainside. Off to the west 
she could see a stretch of railroad; nearer she got a 
glimpse of a highway; she saw horsemen and several 
slower specks, which must be men on foot. Oberst- 
Lieutenant von Fallenbosch had arrived, Ruth believed, 
and Adler had started the pursuit after her. But as she 
thought of the maze of pathways through the forest she 
believed that she was safe for a while — unless a large 
number of the prisoners joined in the search and if Adler 
did not use dogs to track her. 

But she could not make herself safer by farther aimless 
flight. Here seemed to be as secure a spot as she might 
find for the examination of the documents which she had 
procured ; here was the place to plan. She laid out upon 
a rock the pages of von Forstner’s report, and, placing the 
stencils, she studied them in series of three, as she had 
seen Adler do. These pages — those which Adler had 
read, together with those which she had kept concealed — 
told a plain, certain story. The Germans at the present 
moment were concerning themselves with the minutest 
291 


292 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


details of events before the Reims-Soissons line of the 
allies; other sectors, in comparison, were disregarded; 
before Reims and Soissons the enemy were maturing 
their great attack ! 

Ruth, having read, gathered together the pages and sat 
in the sun gazing away over the Rhine to the west. The 
feeling of fate — the touch of destiny — which had exalted 
and transformed her upon that cold January morning in 
Chicago quickened her again. Something beyond herself 
originally had sent her into this tremendous adventure, 
throughout which she had followed instinct — chance — 
fate — whatever you called it — rather than any conscious 
scheme. At the outset she had responded simply to impulse 
to serve; to get into Germany — how, she did not know; 
to do there — what, she had not known. At different 
times she had formed plans, of course, many plans ; but 
as she thought back upon them now they seemed to her to 
have contemplated only details, as though she had recog- 
nized her incapacity, by conscious plan, to attain this 
consummation. 

For she realized that this was consummation. This 
which she already had gained, and gained through acts 
and chances which she could not have foreseen, was all — 
indeed, more than all — she could have hoped to obtain 
through the vague, delayed ordeals which her fancy 
had formed for her. She had nothing more to attempt 
here in the enemy’s land than escape and return to the 
allied lines; she had no right, indeed, to attempt more; 
for anything additional which she could gain would be of 
such slight value, in comparison with what she now had, 
that it could not justify her in heaping hazard upon the 


THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY 


293 


risks which she must run in returning to the allied armies 
with the knowledge she possessed. 

There was Gerry Hull, of course. He was in this land 
of the enemy somewhere — alive or dead. When she was 
entering Germany she had thought of herself as coming, 
somehow, to find and to aid him. But what she had 
gained meant that now she must abandon him. 

She gazed toward the railroad and to the white streak 
of the road to Lauengratz, upon which, after a few 
minutes, a motor again passed ; more horsemen appeared 
and more specks of walking men. But through the woods 
was silence; the axmen, whom she had heard before, be- 
gan to fell other trees; and the steadiness of the sound 
brought Ruth reassurance. Whatever search was being 
made below had not yet disturbed the woodsmen near her. 
Yet she arose and crept a few hundred yards farther up 
the mountainside, and under heavier cover, before she 
dropped to the ground again. 

She found herself more relaxed as the rowels of peril, 
which had goaded her mercilessly, ceased to incite fresh 
strength for farther flight. All her nerves and senses 
remained alert; but her body was exhausted and sore. 
She was hungry, too; and though nothing was farther 
from her thought than sleep, nevertheless she suffered the 
result not only of the strains of the morning, but also of 
her sleeplessness during the night. She was cold, having 
changed from her suit to a linen street dress which had 
been Cynthia Gail’s, and she was without a hat; so she 
sought the sun once more and sat back to a tree and 
rested. 

If recaptured — she thought of herself as having been 


294 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


captured by von Forstner — she recognized that she would 
be shot. Therefore her recapture with von Forstner’s 
reports upon her could not make her fate worse; and 
in any case she determined to preserve them as proof to 
the French — if she ever regained access to the French 
— that the information which she bore was authentic. 
She did up the papers and the stencils together and secreted 
them under her clothing. 

She tried to imagine what Adler and Oberst-Lieutenant 
von Fallenbosch — who undoubtedly was now saying to 
Adler a good deal more than the secretary had dreaded — 
would expect her to do so that she could choose the 
opposite course. The alternatives, obviously, were effort 
to reach the Swiss frontier and in some way elude the 
border guards or to make for the Alsace front, where the 
French and the Americans were fighting. 

This second allured her powerfully; but, to attempt it, 
meant leaving this friendly cover of the Black Forest — 
which would hide her almost to the Swiss frontier — and 
crossing west to the Rhine and across to the Rhine Canal, 
and almost the whole way across Alsace to the Vosges 
Mountains, where the opposing trenches twisted. She 
knew that behind the German fighting front she would 
encounter a military zone of many miles, much more 
difficult to penetrate than the civilian zone bounding the 
soldier-sentineled barriers at the Swiss frontier. But, 
just beyond that zone in Alsace lay American battalions; 
above it would be flying American battleplanes. 

Ruth closed her eyes and seemed to see them; one was 
fighting as she had seen Gerry Hull fight that morning 
near Mirevaux. It was he and he was being shot down! 


THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY 


295 


She started up, blinking in the sunlight. He had been 
shot down again, in truth. This was Germany; and he 
was in Germany; the enemy had him — von Forstner’s 
boasting voice was saying it — dead or a prisoner. She 
shuddered and closed her eyes to see, again, Gerry Hull’s 
face. She seemed to be looking up at him ; he was in blue- 
gray — his F rench uni form. Palms and roses were behind 
him. They were in Mrs. Corliss’ conservatory together, 
their first time alone. 

“ You’re not like anyone else here,” he was saying to 
her. “That’s why I needed to see you again. . . . 

What is it, Cynthia Gail?” A queer, warm little thrill 
went through her; she seemed to be still looking up at 
him, his arms were about her now ; he was carrying her. 
They were upon the Ribot and she was telling him that 
she would have gone into the sea to get anyone — any- 
one at all. Now, “ Ruth — Ruth Alden! ” he was saying. 
Her own name ; and he liked to repeat it. “ They shan’t ! ” 
he was holding her so fiercely. “ They shan’t ! ” Now he 
kissed her hand. Her fingers of her other hand closed 
gently over the hand he had kissed ; so, in the sunlight at 
the base of a tree high upon the mountainside above 
Lauengratz in the Black Forest of Baden, at last she fell 
asleep. 

Not soundly nor for extended periods; a score of times 
she stirred and started up at sounds made by the breeze 
or at the passage of some small forest animal. Once a 
human footfall aroused her; and she was amazed to learn 
how delicate her hearing had been made by alarm when 
she discovered how distant the man was. He bore an 
ax; and evidently he was a Russian or perhaps a French 


296 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


captive; he passed upon a path far below without even 
looking up to where she hid in the trees. Nevertheless 
Ruth fled farther about the mountain before she dared 
rest again. 

At nightfall she was awake and during the first hours 
of blackness she forced her way on in spite of the dismay- 
ing difficulties of wood travel in the dark. She fell re- 
peatedly, even when she ventured upon a path, or she 
bruised herself upon boughs and stumbled into thickets. 
But she did not give up until the conviction came to her 
that she was hopelessly lost. 

At best, she had been proceeding but blunderingly, 
attempting no particular course; merely endeavoring to 
keep to a definite direction. But now she did not know 
whether she had worked west of Lauengratz or had 
circled it to the east or south. She was cold, too; and 
hungry and quite exhausted. Twice she had crossed tiny 
brooks — or else the same brook twice — and she had 
cupped her hands to drink ; thus, with nothing more than 
the cold mountain water to restore her, she lay down at 
last in a little hollow and slept. 

The morning light gave her view over strange valleys 
with all the hills and mountain tops in new configuration. 
She stood up, stiff, and bruised, and weak; taking her 
direction from the sun, she started west, encountering 
cleared ground soon and a well-traveled road, which she 
dared not cross in the daylight. So she followed it north 
until a meeting road, with its cleared ground, halted her. 
At first she determined to wait until dark ; but after a few 
hours of frightened waiting she risked the crossing in 
daylight and fled into the farther woods unseen. Again 


THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY 


297 


that afternoon she came into the open to cross a north and 
south road. Early in the evening she crossed a railroad, 
which she believed to be the road from Freiburg to 
Karlsruhe. 

She had seen many men, women, and children that day, 
as upon the previous day, passing on the roads, or busy 
about houses, or working in fields, or in the woodlands. 
Most of the people were Germans ; but many, undoubtedly, 
were military prisoners or deported civilians. She had 
avoided all alike, not daring to approach any house or any 
person, though now she had been forty-eight hours with- 
out food except for the “ stimulant ” and the accompany- 
ing biscuit which Adler had sent her. 

That night, however, she found the shelter of a shed 
where was straw and at least a little more warmth than 
under the trees. Refuge there involved more risk, she 
knew ; but she had reached almost the end of her strength; 
and, lying in the straw and covering herself with it, she 
slept dreamlessly at first, and then to reassuring, pleasant 
dreams. She was in a chateau — one of those white-gray, 
beautiful, undamaged buildings which she had seen far 
behind the battle lines in France; she was lying in a beau- 
tiful, soft bed, much like that which had been hers at Mrs. 
Mayhew’s apartment upon the Avenue Kleber. Then all 
shifted to a great hospital ward, like that in which she 
had visited Charles Gail ; but she was in the same beautiful 
bed and an attendant — a man — had come to take her 
pulse. 

She stirred, it had become so real ; she could feel gentle, 
but firm/, and very real fingers upon her wrist. Now a 
man’s voice spoke, in French and soothingly. “ It is well, 


298 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


Mademoiselle, I do not mean harm to you. I am only 
Antoine Fayal, a Frenchman from Amagne in the depart- 
ment of Ardennes, Mademoiselle. I ” 

Opening her eyes, Ruth saw a thin, hollow-cheeked, 
dark-haired man of middle age in the rags of blouse and 
trousers which had been, once, a French peasant’s attire. 
He quickly withdrew his hand, which had been upon 
Ruth’s wrist ; and his bloodless lips smiled respectfully and 
reassuringly. 

“ I am French, Mademoiselle,” he begged in a whisper. 
“ Believe me ! One of the deported ; a prisoner. My duty 
here, a woodsman ! Happening by here, Mademoiselle, I 
discovered you; but I alone! No one else. You will 
pardon ; but you were so white ; you barely breathed. I 
did not believe you dead, Mademoiselle; but faint, per- 
haps. So I sought to ascertain ! ” 

“ I thank you ! ” Ruth whispered back, feeling for her 
papers. “ Where are we ? ” 

“ This is part of the estate of Graf von Weddingen, 
Mademoiselle. We are very close to the Rhine. You 

are ” he coughed and altered his question before 

completing it. “It may be in my power to aid you, 
Mademoiselle ? ” 

“ I am an American,” Ruth said. 

“Yes, Mademoiselle.” 

“I have been trying to reach Alsace and the 
and American lines.” 

“ You have done well so far, Mademoiselle,” Fayal said 
respectfully. 

“ How do you know ? ” 

“I know that at noon yesterday, Mademoiselle, you 


French 


THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY 


299 


were twenty kilometers away. The whole countryside has 
been warned to find you ; but you have come these twenty 
kilometers in spite of them.” 

He coughed and checked himself, a little guiltily, as she 
startled. “That is, Mademoiselle, if you are that 
American lady who had accompanied Hauptmann von 
Forstner.” 

“ I am that one,” Ruth admitted. 

“ Then, Mademoiselle, come immediately with me ! No 
morhent is to be lost!” 

He went to the door of the shed and gazed cautiously 
about. Ruth arose and began brushing the straw from 
herself; sleep had restored her nerves, but not her 
strength, she found. She swayed when she stepped. She 
was completely at the mercy of this man, as she must 
have been in the power of whoever found her. But she 
did not distrust Fayal. His emaciation, his cough, and, 
more than those, his manner — the manner of a man who 
had been suffering indignities without letting himself 
become servile; and' together with that, his concern and 
respect for a woman — seemed to Ruth beyond counter- 
feit. 

“You require food, of course, Mademoiselle!” Fayal 
exclaimed in dismay. “And I have none!” 

“ I can follow you,” Ruth assured. 

“ Then now, Mademoiselle ! ” 

He stepped from the shed, and, motioning to her to 
imitate him, he slipped into the trees to the right. Evi- 
dently he considered her danger great; the peril to him, 
if caught aiding one who was attempting escape, must be 
as positive as her own; but the Frenchman was disregard- 


300 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


ful of that. He gained a gully, and, returning, aided her 
in descending. Someone approached. “ Lie flat! ” Fayal ; 
whispered. She obeyed; and, while she lay, she heard 
German voices shouting and the sounds of search. 

When they had moved far away, Fayal led her to a 
dugout entrance, concealed by brush and with last year's 
leaves scattered before it. 

“ Keep well back in there, Mademoiselle ; until I come 
again for you ! ” 

She went into a low and dark but fairly dry cavern 
under the hillside. She heard Fayal tossing about leaves | 
to hide the entrance as before. Soon he was gone. 

Many times during the day Ruth heard people passing 
through the woods. Once she was sure that a group of 
men were engaged in a search; but they failed to find the 
cavern. Only late in the afternoon someone, who stepped 
quickly and lightly — a child or a slight, active woman — 
ran close past the brush before the entrance, and, without 
halting, tossed a bundle into the bush. 

Ruth had been obeying Fayal’s injunction to stay well 
back in the cavern ; now, venturing to the bush, she found 
a paper package, within which was a chunk of blackish, 
hard bread and two boiled turnips. She thought, as she 
saw this food, that it had been Fayal’s perhaps; at least, 
it had been the ration of some prisoner or deported captive 
as ill fed, probably, as he. But she was ravenous ; this had 
been given her, however little it could have been spared 
by the donor. She ate it all and was stronger. 

Fayal did not return that day; but during the night 
someone visited the cavern, for, when morning came, she 
found food. 


THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY 


301 


At night Fayal returned, and when he guided her out 
of the woods across fields and farms, she realized how 
essential were the precautions he had enjoined. He 
guided her half the night, and brought her to another 
concealment, where another French refugee took her in 
charge. 

She had become a passenger, she found, upon one of 
the “underground railways” in operation to conduct 
escaped prisoners across the frontiers; Fayal, having 
brought her safely over his section, said his adieu. 

“The next German attack is to come upon the French 
on the front between Reims and Soissons, remember, 
Fayal,” Ruth enjoined upon the man when parting with 
him. “ If I fail to get through, you must try to send the 
word.” 

“Yes, Mademoiselle. But you must not fail. Good 
fortune, Mademoiselle, adieu!” 

“Good fortune, Fayal; a thousand thanks again; and 
— adieu ! ” 

Her new conductor led her on a few more miles that 
night; she laid up during the day; at night proceeded 
under a new guide. 

So she passed on from hiding place to hiding place, 
sometimes lying for days at a time — terrible, torturing 
delays, during which she dreamed of the Germans advanc- 
ing over all that Reims-Soissons front and sweeping over 
the French armies as they had overwhelmed the British in 
Picardy. And she — she, if she might go on, could pre- 
vent them ! Many times during the endless hours she lay 
alone waiting for her guide who did not appear, she crept 
out from her concealment, determined to force on; but 


302 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


always she learned the futility of attempting to proceed 
alone. 

She was following her sixth guide after Fayal, and it 
was upon the eleventh evening after her escape from 
Lauengratz, when suddenly she heard a rough challenge ; 
German soldiers appeared across the path ; others leaped 
up from the right and left; yet others were behind. 

Her guide instantly recognized that he had led her into 
a trap; and he fought, wildly, to try to save her. She 
fought, too. But they bayoneted him, and, upon their 
bayonets, they bore him back upon her. A soldier seized 
her; overpowered her, brutally, and she struggled no 
longer with hope to fight free, but only to destroy the 
papers which she still carried. So they pinioned her arms ; 
they half stripped her in searching her; they took her 
papers, and leaving her guide dead upon the ground, they 
hurried her with them to their commandant. 

This officer instantly suspected her identity. For, in 
spite of her eleven nights of flight, she was not yet seventy 
miles from Lauengratz. Disposition of her evidently had 
been predetermined, pending her recapture ; for the 
officer, after examining her again, dispatched her to a 
railroad train, under guard. They put her in manacles 
and, boarding a north-bound train, they took her to a town 
the name of which she could not learn. From the station 
they marched her to what appeared to be an old castle, 
where they at once confined her, alone, in a stone-walled 
cell. 

It possessed a solitary, narrow slit of a window, high 
up under the ceiling; it boasted for furniture a cot, a 
chair and bowls. The Germans relieved her of the 


THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY 


303 


manacles when they led her into this cell. Not long after 
she was left alone, light streaked in through the slit of a 
window ; a hand, opening a panel in her door, thrust in 
a dipper of soup and a chunk of bread. 

Ruth received the food, consumed it, and sank down 
upon her pallet. Her great venture thus had come to an 
end; her life was forfeit; and by all that she had dared 
and done, she had accomplished — nothing. 

No ; more than nothing. She had caused the arrest of 
De Trevenac and those taken with him; she had aided at 
I least a little in the frightful labors of the retreat from 
Mirevaux. She had saved the life of Gerry Hull! 

She never before had permitted herself to think that 
she had saved Gerry; without her he might have been 
able to free himself from under his machine. But now 
she let herself believe. 

This gave her a share in the battles which he had 
' fought over the advancing enemy lines. Yes; she had 
accomplished more than nothing. Yet how much less 
than she had dreamed! And all of her dream — or most 
of it — might actually have come true! She had pos- 
sessed the German plan; indeed, she still possessed the 
knowledge of the front of the next assault and something 
of the detail of the enemy operations! She had com- 
mitted it, verbally, to Fayal and to others of her guides; 
so it was possible that it might yet reach the allied lines. 
But she realized that, even though Fayal or one of the 
others sent the word through, it must completely lack 
authority; it must reach the French as merely a rumor — 
a trick of the enemy, perhaps; it could not be heeded. 

She sat up with muscles all through her tugging taut. 


304 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


It seemed that with her frantic strength, with her bare 
hands she must rend those stones and escape, not to save 
herself, but to return to the allied lines and tell them 
what she knew. But the coldness of the stones, when she 
touched them, shocked her to realizations. 

Tomorrow — or perhaps even today — the enemy 
might take her out and kill her. And while death — her 
individual, personal annihilation — had become a matter 
of amazingly small account, yet the recognition that 
with death must come withdrawal, perhaps, even from 
knowledge of how the battle was going upon that line 
where the fate of all the world was at stake, where Britons 
and French fought as she had seen them fight, and where, 
at last, America was arriving — that crushed her down 
to her pallet and with despair quite overwhelmed her. 

So she set herself to thinking of Gerry. He was alive, 
perhaps; a prisoner, therefore, and to be returned some 
day when the war was over, to marry Lady Agnes, while 
she .... Ruth did not shudder when she thought 
of herself dead. 

Perhaps Gerry was dead ; then she would be going at 
once to join him. And if they merely took her out and 
shot her today, or tomorrow, or some day soon, without 
doing anything more to her than that, she might find 
Gerry and rejoin him, much as she had been when he had 
known her and — yes — liked her. Without having suf- 
fered indignity, that was. These cold stones seemed at 
least to assure her of this. So she lay and thought of 
him while the slit of light crept slowly from left to right 
as the sun swung to the west and she listened for the step 
of those who would come to her cell. 


CHAPTER XX 


AN OFFICERS' PRISON 

G ERRY, when shot down over the German lines, 
had succeeded in making that “ some sort of land- 
ing” which his comrades had reported. 

There was an axiom, taught in the training camps to 
give confidence to cadets, which said that when a pilot 
once gets his wheels squarely on the ground, he will not 
be killed, though his machine may be badly smashed. 
Gerry, in his landing, had tested this axiom to its utmost ; 
for he had had sufficient control of his ship, at the last, 
to put his wheels square to the ground; and though his 
machine was wholly wrecked, he was not killed. He was 
painfully shaken and battered ; but so excellently was his 
ship planned to protect the pilot in a “ crash,” that he was 
not even seriously injured. Indeed, after the German 
soldiers dragged him out he was able to stand — and was 
quite able, so the German intelligence officers decided, 
to undergo an ordeal intended to make him divulge 
information. 

This ordeal failed, as it failed with all brave men taken 
prisoners; and Gerry was given escort out of the zone 
of the armies and put upon a train for a German prison 
camp. With him were an American infantry lieutenant 
and two French officers. 

The Germans held, at that time, nearly two million 
305 


306 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


prisoners of war, of which upwards of twenty thousand i 
were officers ; the men and non-commissioned officers — | 
as Gerry had heard — were distributed in more than a 
hundred great camps, while for the officers there were 
about fifty prisons scattered all over the German states, j 
These varied in character from sanatoria, newly erected 
high-school buildings, hotels, and vacated factories, to , 
ancient brick and stone fortresses housing prisoners in 
their dark, damp casemates. The offizier-gefangenenlager 1 
to which Gerry and his three companions finally were 
taken proved to be one of the old fortress castles just 
east of the Rhine, in the grand duchy of Hesse; its name 
was Villinstein, and it housed at that time about five hun- 
dred officers and officers’ servants. There Gerry and his ; 
three companions were welcomed, not alone for them- j 
selves, but for the news which they brought with them; 
and Gerry, being an aviator, found himself particularly 
welcome. 

“ For a flyin’ man we’ve been a-waitin’, Gerry, dear,” j 
Captain O’Malley — formerly of the Irish Fusiliers — 1 
whispered and all but chanted into Gerry’s ear soon after 
they became acquainted. All allied officer prisoners — 
as German official reports frequently complained — • 
planned an escape; but some schemed more than others. 
And the heart, if not the soul, of the schemes of escape 
from Villinstein was the black-haired, dark-eyed, light- 
hearted Kerry man of twenty-four summers, who was 
back in the casemates with his fellows again after six 
weeks of “the solitary” in a dungeon as punishment for 
his last effort for liberty. 

“ ’Tis this way,” O’Malley initiated Gerry immediately 


AN OFFICERS’ PRISON 


307 


into the order of those bound to break for freedom. They 
were standing alone at a corner of the castle, which gave 
view over the ground to the east. “ Out there you see the 
first wire — ’tis often charged with electricity at night — 
to catch us if we leap over these walls. Beyond you see 
the second entanglement of the same persuasion; after 
that — nothing at all ! Do you see?” 

Gerry admitted vision, as though the walls below them, 
the guards and the two wire barriers were merest trifles. 

“ We’ve been beyond many times,” the Irishman 
motioned, unfolding his theory of immateriality of the 
apparent obstacles. “Many times.” 

“ How ? ” Gerry inquired. 

“By burrow, mostly. Now and then in other ways; 
but by tunnel is most certain. ’Tis harmless amusement 
for us, the enemy think; so they let us dig, though they 
know we’re doing it, till we’re ready to run out. Then 
they halt us and claim the reward. ’Tis arranged so.” 

Gerry nodded. He had heard long before, from escaped 
prisoners, that at certain camps the Germans made little 
attempt to prevent tunneling until the burrows were 
almost completed. The German system of rewards, by 
some peculiar psychology of the command, gave more 
credit to guards for “detecting” an escape than at first 
preventing it. 

“This time ’twill be different!” O’Malley promised, 
smacking his lips. 

“Why?” 

“ They don’t know where we’re burrowing.” 

“ How many times before haven’t they known? ” Gerry 
asked cautiously. 


308 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“Many times,” O’Malley admitted. “But this time 
they don’t. We’re working at two they know about, of 
course; but the third — ” he checked himself and looked 
about cautiously, then spoke more closely to Gerry’s ear. 
“’Tis well planned now. Ye’ve seen the tennis court in 
the courtyard?” 

“Certainly,” Gerry said. 

“Did ye note the fine new grandstand we built 
about it?” 

He referred, obviously, to the tiers of steps, or seats, 
to accommodate the spectators at the match games for 
the championship of the camp which then were being 
played. 

“ Under the stands where they run up against the side 
of the canteen building,” O’Malley confided, “is a fine, 
empty space for hiding dirt which the Huns don’t yet 
inspect — that not yet being listed for inspection, nothing 
yet having happened beneath. So there we’re digging the 
true tunnel — besides the two that everyone knows about. 
Now that you’re here, we’ll use it. We’ve been only 
awaiting — while wishing nobody any hard luck — for 
a flying man. For we’ve been beyond the wire many 
times,” the Irishman repeated. “ But now with you here, 
we’ll go farther.” And he gazed away to the east, where 
airplanes were circling in the clear sky. 

They had risen from an airdrome about two miles 
distant from Villinstein, Gerry learned, where the Ger- 
mans were training cadet flyers. O’Malley had managed 
to learn something of the arrangement of the airdrome 
and had observed the habits of the cadets; he had a 
wonderful plan by which the party of prisoners, who 


AN OFFICERS’ PRISON 


309 


should use the secret tunnel to get beyond the wire, should 
surprise the guards at the flying field and capture an air- 
plane. Thus Gerry began his prison life with a plot for 
escape. 

At times he took his turn digging in the tunnel; at 
times he was one of the crowd of spectators upon the 
stand about the tennis court, who stamped and applauded 
loudly whenever the men working below signaled for a 
little noise to mask their more audible activities ; at times 
he himself took part in the play. 

Every few days groups of prisoners were permitted to 
take a tramp in the neighborhood under the escort of a 
couple of German officers. To obtain this privilege, each 
prisoner was required to give his parole not to attempt 
to escape while on these expeditions; but as the parole 
bound no one after the return to the fortress, the prison- 
ers gave it. Gerry in this way obtained a good view of 
the surroundings of Villinstein; and in one way or 
| another he and the other officers picked up a good deal 
of news which otherwise would not have reached the 
prison. 

It was in this manner that word reached the officer 
prisoners at Villinstein that an American girl, who had 
entered Germany by way of Switzerland in an attempt to 
obtain military information, had been captured and had 
been taken to the schloss belonging to von Fallenbosch, 
near Mannheim, fifty miles away. It was not known 
, whether she had been executed or whether she still was 
1 living; indeed, it was not known whether she had been 
tried yet; or whether she was to be tried; and her 
identity — except that she was an American girl — also 


310 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


was a mystery. That is, it was unknown to the prisoner 
who brought in the news and to the others to whom he 
told it; but it was not a mystery to Gerry. He knew 
that the girl was Ruth Alden — that she had gone on 
with her plan and been caught. 

And the knowledge imbued him with furious dismay. * 
He blamed himself as the cause of her being at the mercy ■ 
of the enemy. He had seen no way past the dilemma 
which had confronted him in regard to her, except to make 
a negative report in regard to Ruth which — he had hoped j 
— would both keep her free from trouble with the French 
authorities and prevent her gaining permission to leave 
France for Switzerland. He had learned, too late, that 
while he had accomplished the former end, he had failed 
in the latter. She had been allowed to proceed to Switzer- 
land; then he was shot down and captured. 

It had been impossible, therefore, for him to seek 
further information of her fate; but he had her in his 
mind almost constantly. When he was by himself, in 
such isolation as Villinstein afforded, his thoughts dwelt 
upon her. He liked to review, half dreamily as he sat 
in a corner of a casemate with a book, all his hours with 
her and recall — or imagine — how she looked that first 
time she had spoken to him. The d^ays upon the Ribot 
had become, marvelously, days with' her. Quite without 
his will — and certainly without his conscious intention — 
Agnes had less and less place in his recollections of the 
voyage. She was always there, of course ; but his thought 
and his feelings did not of themselves restore to him hours 
with her. It was the same when he was talking over 
personal and home affairs with the men with whom he 


AN OFFICERS’ PRISON 


311 


became best acquainted — with O’Malley and a Canadian 
captain named Lownes; when the Irishman spoke of the 
girl waiting for him and when Lownes — who was mar- 
ried — told of his wife, Gerry mentioned Ruth; and — 
yes — he boasted a bit of her. 

“I thought,” O’Malley said to him later, “that you 
were engaged to an English girl, the daughter of an earl 
or such.” 

Gerry colored a little. “We’ve been good friends; 

I that’s all, Michael; never more than that. When we 
I happened to go to America on the same boat, our papers 
j over there tried to make more of it; and some of their 
stuff reached this side.” 

This was true enough; but it left out of account the 
fact that, not long ago, Gerry had hoped himself some 
day to make “more of it”; and, later, he had not tried. 
Now, as he thought back he knew that Agnes had never 
loved him; and he had not loved her. This strange 
| girl whom he had known at first as Cynthia, and then as 
I Ruth Alden, had stirred in him not only doubts of the 
ideas by which he had lived; she had roused him to 
j requirements of friendship — of love, let him admit it 
now — which he had not felt before. Their ride together 
I away from Mirevaux, when he sat almost helpless and 
; swaying at her side after she had saved his life, became 
to him the day of discovery of her and of himself. He 
could see her so clearly as her eyes blurred with tears 
when she told him about “ 1583 ; ” and he knew that then 
he loved her. Their supper together at Compiegne 
became to him the happiest hour of his life. He had felt 
for her more strongly that evening of their last parting 


312 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


in the pension ; but then the shadow of her great venture 
was over them. 

Everything which happened somehow reminded him 
of her. When he was out of the prison during the walks 
on parole and he passed groups of German civilians and 
overheard their remarks about America, he thought of 
her. The Germans were perfectly able to understand why 
France fought, and why England fought, and why Russia 
had fought ; but why had America come in ? Why was 
America making her tremendous effort ? What was she 
to gain? Nothing — nothing material, that was. The 
enemy simply could not understand it except by imputing 
to America motives and aims which Gerry knew were not 
true. Thus from experience with the enemy he was 
beginning to appreciate that feeling which Ruth had 
possessed and tried to explain to him — feeling of the 
true nobility of his country. So, as he went on his walks 
in Germany, he was proud that his uniform marked him 
as an American. Prouder — yes, prouder than he could 
have been under any other coat ! 

He had intended to tell her so; but now she was taken 
and in the hands of the Germans ! They would execute 
her; perhaps already they had! From such terrors there 
was no relief but work — work in the tunnel, by which 
he must escape, and then save her, or die trying. 

A little more news arrived; the American girl was 
believed to be yet alive ; that was four days ago. 

“ We must work faster,” O’Malley enjoined after hear- 
ing this ; and Gerry, who had not yet said anything about 
his private fears, learned that others in the camp also 
planned to rescue the American girl under sentence at 


AN OFFICERS’ PRISON 


313 


the schloss. The camp — which in six months had not 
succeeded in getting one of their own number free — 
swore now to save the prisoner of von Fallenbosch. Such 
was the spirit of the offizier-gefangenenlager of Villin- 
stein. 

So Gerry told O’Malley and Lownes about Ruth Alden; 
and together they laid their plans. Two days later the 
Irishman grasped Gerry’s arm tightly. 

“ We wait, bye, only for a moon.” 

“You mean the bore’s finished?” 

“As near as may be till the night of use. You’ve the 
almanac ; when will be the moon big enough to give you 
light to fly ? ” 

“Fri — no, Thursday, Mike?” 

“You’ll be certain, bye; you’ll not spoil all by impul- 
siveness.” 

“ Thursday will be all right, if it’s clear, Mike.” 

“Then pray, bye, for a dark evening.” 

“And a clear night!” 

“Aye; a clear night — to find Mannheim!” 

And Thursday evening came, overclouded, yet with a 
moon behind the clouds which shone bright and clear 
for minutes at a time, then, obscured, left all the land in 
blackness. 

The digging parties of the last week had placed in the 
tunnel enough food from the officers’ packages, which 
arrived regularly through Switzerland, to supply three 
days’ rations for ten men ; so that night the ten descended 
into the tunnel. They recognized it was possible that the 
guards knew about the tunnel and had permitted them to 
enter it that night only to catch them at the other end. 


314 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


The test would come when taps was sounded and the 
German officer of the day, making his rounds of the bar- 
racks, would find ten men missing roll- call. 

Gerry then was lying on his face in the tunnel and 
passing back dirt which those in front of him excavated. 
Only by counting the drumming of his heart could he 
estimate the minutes passing, but he knew that the delay 
in the tunnel was longer than O’Malley had planned. 

“Taps! Taps!” came the word from Lownes, at the 
prison end of the burrow, who had heard the German 
bugle blow. From forward, where O’Malley was digging, 
dirt kept coming back, and still more dirt. For the diggers 
had not dared to run the bore to the surface, nor, indeed, 
near enough to the surface so that a sentinel, treading 
above, would break through. At best, therefore, O’Malley, 
who was finishing the bore, had a fair amount left to do. 

“The alarm! The alarm!” 

Gerry, gasping in the stifling air of the burrow, could 
not hear the bugle or the bells ; the warning was passed to 
him by the man at his heels ; and Gerry passed the alarm 
on to the heels at his head. The Germans knew now that 
men were missing; the camp guards were out, the police 
dogs let loose; sentinels would fire, without challenge, at 
anyone sighted outside of the barracks. 

But from past the heels at Gerry’s head a fresh, cool 
current of air was moving. He drew deep breaths, and 
as the heels crawled from him he thrust upon his elbows 
and crept after. The bore was open ; O’Malley was out 
upon the ground. The heels ahead of Gerry altered to a 
hand, which reached into the burrow, caught Gerry’s arm, 
and dragged him out. Kneeling at the edge of the hole, 


AN OFFICERS’ PRISON 


315 


he thrust his arm down, caught someone, and pulled 
him out. 

O’Malley was gone; the man whose hand had helped 
Gerry also had vanished. Gerry made no attempt to find 
or follow them as he crouched and ran ; the plan was that 
all would scatter immediately. Machine guns were going; 
searchlights were sweeping the ground. Gerry fell flat 
when a beam swung at him, went over and caught some 
other poor devil. A field piece upon a platform on the 
edge of the camp opened upon the space a hundred yards 
beyond Gerry and shrapnel began smashing. 

One good thing about shrapnel Gerry recognized; it 
spread smoke which screened the searchlight flares. 
Another feature was that it and the machine-gun fire was 
as hard on the police dogs as upon the fugitives. But that 
was like the Germans — when they were surprised — to 
let go everything at once. 

Gerry jumped up and fled, taking his chances with the 
machine-gun bullets and with the shrapnel which burst all 
about at random; but he watched the searchlights and 
threw himself down when they threatened. 

O’Malley had planned a surprise attack in force — if 
you can call ten unarmed men a force when attacking a 
German flying field. But Gerry knew that already the 
ten must be cut in two. Some of them probably never 
got out of the tunnel; the machine guns or the shrapnel 
surely must have accounted for one or two. He heard 
dogs give tongue as they were taught to do when they had 
caught prisoners. 

The Irishman’s plan, wild enough at best, had become 
hopeless. Gerry had offered no other plan, because he 


316 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


had failed to form anything less mad. But now as he lay 
on the ground, while a searchlight streamed steadily above 
him, a plan offered itself. 

This came from the clouds and from the moon shining 
through when, as now, the clouds split and parted — from 
the moon whose rising and shining full O’Malley and he 
had awaited. They had waited for the moon to furnish 
them light for their night flight in a German airplane after 
they got the machine. They had not thought of the moon 
as bringing them a “ ship.” But now, above the rattle of 
the machine guns and between the smashings of the shrap- 
nel, Gerry heard motors in the air and he knew that night- 
flying Hun-birds were up. For their pilots, too, had been 
waiting for the moon for practice. 

It is all very well to talk about night flying in the dark ; 
but Gerry knew how difficult — almost impossible — is 
flight in actual darkness. When he had been in training 
for night flying, years ago at his French training field, he 
had waited so many weeks for the moon that now he 
jeered at himself, lying flat under the searchlight beam, 
for a fool not to have thought of German flyers being up 
tonight. 

They were up — six or eight of them at least. He could 
see their signal lights when he could not hear their motors. 
They had come overhead when the lights at the prison 
blazed out and the guns got going. The machine guns 
and the shrapnel fire ceased ; only the searchlights glared 
out over the fields beyond the prison wire. The moon 
went under the clouds again. Gerry knew he could dodge 
the searchlights ; but now he made no attempt whatever 
to flee. Instead, he crept back toward the prison, and 


AN OFFICERS’ PRISON 


317 


between the beams of lights, which reached away to the 
south, almost parallel, and which swung back and forth 
slightly. 

Except for those lights, all was black now ; and Gerry 
knew how those searchlight beams must tempt some Ger- 
man cadet making his first night flight under the clouds. 
Gerry had been a cadet flying at night in the darkness 
with clouds closing overhead. He knew how strange and 
terrifying was the blackness of the ground; how welcome 
was any light giving view of a landing place. The air- 
drome, with its true landing lights, was two miles to the 
south ; but what was direction, and what was a difference 
of two miles to a cadet coming down through the clouds, 
and “ feeling” in the darkness for the ground? Gerry 
himself only a few months before, when caught by closing 
clouds, had come down in a field six miles from the one 
he sought. Indeed, French airmen flying at night had 
come down in German airdromes by mistake, as Germans 
had come down in French. 

So Gerry lay in the blackness between the searchlight 
beams, accusing himself for dullness in not having known. 
If he had seen an escape before, and seen these search- 
lights shooting out over the fields, he might have realized 
how they imitated landing lights; but he had not; and 
O’Malley — if he lived — would be waiting for him by 
the flying field. No, not O’Malley. For the Irishman’s 
voice whispered to him gently. O’Malley dragged him- 
self up. 

“Bye, you’re hit, too?” 

“No; I’m all right. You?” 

“ ’Twas bad planned, all.” The Irishman took blame 


318 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


upon himself for the catastrophe which had befallen the 
others. “I doubt whether any of them ” 

His lips lay to Gerry’s ear; but Gerry turned his head. 

“You can stand and fight a minute, O’Malley ?” 

“Arrah! You see them coming?” 

“It’s overhead, O’Malley; listen. One of them’s try- 
ing to get down. Maybe there’s two men in it.” 

“ What do you mean I should hear ? ” 

“The silence,” Gerry said. “One of them just shut 
off above us.” 

“ I’m affecting you, bye,” said O’Malley. “ But I know 
what you mean.” 

The silence to which Gerry referred was only com- 
parative; the motor was shut off in the German airplane 
which was trying to “get down”; but the rush of the 
volplane kept the airscrew thrashing audibly. The 
sound passed a hundred yards overhead; it increased 
suddenly to a roar as the pilot opened his throttle; and 
Gerry knew that in volplaning down, the cadet had 
misjudged the ground and had switched on his engine to 
give him power to circle about and try for the landing 
again. 

The roar returned; throttled down; the airscrew 
thrashed; black-crossed wings darted through the beams 
of a searchlight; the pilot got his wheels on the ground 
and his machine was bounding. Gerry was on his feet 
and running after it. O’Malley followed. The airplane 
rolled slowly through the second pencil of light and, as 
the pilot stepped from his seat, Gerry charged him from 
behind. Gerry tackled him and knocked him down ; Gerry 
jerked out the German’s automatic pistol. 


AN OFFICERS’ PRISON 


319 


“ O’Malley?” Gerry challenged the figure which 
struggled up. 

“Bye! ” 

“There was only one on board. I have him. Take 
his pistol ammunition, his helmet, and goggles.’' 

“ I have them, bye.” 

“ Get aboard — in the forward seat pit ! ” 

Gerry backed to the machine himself, holding the Ger- 
man covered. The prisoner dodged back and moved to 
wreck his machine. Gerry fired and the German fell. 

Gerry jumped into the pilot’s pit; the engine and 
the airscrew the German had left just turning over; 
Gerry opened wide, and felt his wheels rolling; an exulta- 
tion of relief and triumph, rather than definite sense, told 
him that he was flying. Little lights set over dials before 
him informed of the accustomed details by strange scales 
and meters — his speed, his height, his direction of flight, 
and the revolutions his engine was making. 

He gazed below at the ground lights from which he had 
risen; he turned about. The machine which he had 
captured, like most training machines, was big and heavy; 
its body could be arranged for two seats or for one. 
O’Malley had found the other pit ; and though the machine 
had been balanced for pilot only, the trick of flying with 
weight forward was easy for Gerry. 

He switched on the light above the mapboard and found 
spread before him a large detail map of the immediate 
vicinity. Below was a chart of smaller scale for use in 
case the pilot “flew out” of the first map and was lost. 
But Gerry was satisfied with the one already in position. 
It gave him Mannheim and — he bent closer to see clearly 


320 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


upon the vibrating surface — the grounds and wood von 
Fallenbosch and also the speck of the schloss. 

The feeling of boundless power, limitless recklessness 
to dare and do, which flight had first brought to him as a 
cadet years before, reclaimed him. Flight, that miracu- 
lous endowment, was his again. He passed to O’Malley 
the German pilot’s hood ; he protected his own eyes with 
the goggles, and, watching the ground to estimate the 
wind drift, he set his course by compass for Mannheim. 
What he was to do there he did not know; and he no 
longer attempted to form any plan. The event — inevi- 
table and yet unforseeable — which had brought him this 
ship had taught him tonight to cease to plan. He was 
flying, and content to let fate guide him. Somehow — 
he had no idea at all of how — but somehow this night he 
would find Ruth Alden and take her with him. Destiny 
— the confidence in the guidance of fate which comes to 
every soldier and, more than to any other, to the flying 
fighter of the sky — set him secure and happy in the 
certainty of this. 

He had climbed above the clouds and was flying 
smoothly and serenely in the silver moonlight. He was 
flying solitarily, too; for if alarm had spread upon the 
ground to tell that escaped prisoners had taken a German 
machine, it had not yet communicated itself to a pilot in 
position to pursue. Behind him lay only the moonlight 
and the stars; below, the sheen of cloud tops, unearthly, 
divine ; the sheen split and gaped in great chasms, through 
which the moonlight slanted down, lighting great spots of 
darkness separated by the glinting path of the Rhine. The 
river made his piloting simple; he had only to sight it 


AN OFFICERS’ PRISON 


321 


when the clouds cleared, and he must follow to Mann- 
heim. 

There was a machine gun set in the nacelle before 
O’Malley, and Gerry saw the Irishman working with it. 
O’Malley pulled the trigger, firing a few trial shots, and 
turned back to Gerry and grinned. The noise of the 
motor and the airscrew prevented Gerry from communi- 
cating any plan to his comrade, even if Gerry had one, 
but he knew that, in whatever happened, he could count 
upon O’Malley’s complete recklessness and instant wit. 

Lights were below — most of them a bit back from the 
river. That would be the city of Worms; a few more 
miles, and Gerry must decide what he was going to do. 
But for the moment the sensation of freedom and of flight 
together continued to intoxicate him. The Rhine wavered 
away to the east, straightened south; ahead — far ahead 
— lights. There was Mannheim. 

But O’Malley, in the forward seat, had turned, and, 
with an arm, pointed him forward and above. And far 
ahead, and higher, Gerry spied dancing specks which 
caught the moonbeams — specks set in regular order 
across the sky and advancing in formation. An air 
squadron flying north ! 

Below it mighty crimson flashes leaped from the 
ground, and through the clatter of his motor Gerry heard 
the detonation of tremendous, thunderous charges. Now 
black spots of smoke floated before the flying specks, and 
from the ground guns spat fiery into action — German 
anti-aircraft guns replying to aerial torpedoes dropped 
from the sky. 

Others besides the officer prisoners of Villinstein and 


322 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


the German cadets of the nearby airdrome had waited 
for the moon that night. Allied pilots also had waited; 
and now, with the moon to favor and guide them, they 
had come to attack the chemical works and the munition 
factories of Mannheim! An allied air raid was on that 
night ! 


CHAPTER XXI 


THE RAID ON THE SCHLOSS 

G ERRY’S feet thrust on the rudder bar, swinging his 
machine to meet them, while hot rills ran through 
his limbs, warming him against the chill of the night 
flight above the clouds. He had thought of the frontier 
as a hundred and fifty miles away — two hours’ flight at 
best in this slow, heavy training “bus” — but here his 
friends were bringing it to him. His excitement prevented 
him from realizing instantly that to his friends he must 
appear an enemy — a black-crossed Hun-bird flying to 
fight them. 

A covey of German pursuit planes, flushed up from 
some airdrome near the raided city, swooped upward in 
front of Gerry, climbing for the advantage of altitude 
before starting their attack upon the raiders. Gerry could 
see them clearly — triplane Fokkers mostly, of the swift- 
est, best-climbing, and best-armed type. Some of them 
saw him, but saw, too, that his machine was German. 
Probably the pilots wondered what that old “bus” was 
doing there, but no one investigated, while Gerry flew on. 

The clouds had quite cleared below, but the city of 
Mannheim, speckled with lights a few minutes before, lay 
dark except where the great crimson bursts of the allied 
torpedoes erupted; where flames fanned from roofs of 
burning buildings; where the scintillant points of search- 
323 


324 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


lights glared into the sky. Rockets streaked above the 
black city; shells flared and flaked in the air; and the 
glory of battle grasped Gerry. Grasped O’Malley, too. 
He patted his machine gun and turned about in his seat, 
appealing to Gerry. 

Above them the Fokkers and the other machines of the 
German defense were diving and engaging the raiders; a 
light caught the under wings of a plane and showed Gerry 
the tricolor circles of the allies. Before it sparks streaked 
— the illuminated tracer bullets streaming from the ma- 
chine guns ; and toward it, beyond it — now through it — 
other sparks streaked back. These were the tracer bullets 
of the German who was attacking; and Gerry, jerking 
back his elevator, tried to climb ; but the big, lumbering 
training “bus” responded only slowly. 

When he threw up the nose, bringing the forward 
machine gun to bear, O’Malley loosed a burst of bullets, 
though the target German plane was five hundred yards 
away. A range of that length was all right for machine- 
gun work on the ground, but in the air — with firing gun 
and with the target flying — it was sure waste. Gerry 
bent forward and pummeled O’Malley’s back to tell him 
so. But the Irishman did not turn ; while Gerry climbed, 
the raiders and the Germans dropped, bringing the battle 
nearer, and O’Malley had a target now at two hundred 
yards from which he would not be withheld. 

The range still shortened, and bullets streaked down 
past Gerry. He gazed above and tried to dodge ; O’Malley 
looked up; he saw the tricolor circle and did not reply. 
One of their own people, having sighted the black cross, 
was coming down upon them, taking them for German. 


THE RAID ON THE SCHLOSS 


325 


And at the same instant the far-off Fokker at which 
O’Malley had been firing realized that there was some- 
thing wrong about this big, slow, black-crossed machine ; 
the German swung upon it, his machine guns going. 
Gerry’s engine went dead and he found himself auto- 
matically guiding the “ bus ” in a volplane which he was 
keeping as slow and as “flat” as possible as he glided 
below the battle and sought upon the ground for a place to 
land. 

He examined his altimeter and learned that he was still 
up four thousand feet, and with the flat gliding angle of 
the wide-winged training biplane, he knew that he had a 
radius of more than two miles for the choice of his land- 
ing. The battle was still going on above Mannheim, as 
the allied bombers had swung back. A machine flashed 
into flame and started down, with its pilot evidently con- 
trolling it at first; then too much of the wing fabric was 
consumed and it dropped. Other machines, too, were 
leaving the battle; some of them seemed to be Germans 
damaged and withdrawing; others appeared to be all 
right — they had just spent their ammunition, perhaps. 
One got on the tail of Gerry’s machine, looked him over, 
and then dropped past him. 

Gerry was gliding north and west of the city, making 
for wide, open spaces shown on the map which he had been 
studying — the smooth spaces of the fields of the Schloss 
von Fallenbosch. Five hundred yards away through the 
moonlight, and at almost his same altitude, he saw another 
machine gliding, as he was, with engine shut off ; the circle 
of their volplane swept them toward each other. 

In the forward seat pit of the English machine-— for 


326 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


Gerry steered close enough not only to see the allied 
insignia but the distinctive details of the British bombing 
plane — the man who had been bomber and machine 
gunner was lying back with head dropped; and the pilot, 
too, had been hit. He seemed to be half fainting, only 
spurring himself up for a few seconds at a time to control 
his glide. 

Gerry stood up as they glided side by side; he hoped 
that the Englishman could make out his uniform in the 
moonlight. He knew it was little likely that the other 
could hear his shout, yet he yelled: “I’m American; 
follow me ! ” And dropping back to his seat, Gerry set 
himself to selecting the best spot for his landing. Whether 
or not the English pilot saw or heard, he followed Gerry 
down. The clear moonlight displayed the ground bare 
and smooth; it was hard to guess just when to cease 
dropping and, turning straight into the wind, give your 
elevators that last little upturn which would permit land- 
ing on your wheels and rolling ; but he did it, and, turning 
in his seat as the rolling slowed, he saw the English plane 
bounding upon the field; it leaped, threatened to topple, 
but came down on its wheels again. Gerry had his hand 
on O’Malley. Together they leaped down and ran to 
where the English biplane had halted. 

The English pilot had regained strength; he had suc- 
ceeded even in lifting the body of his bomber out of his 
machine; and, considering himself captured, he hastened 
to remove the top of his fuel tank in order to set fire 
to his ship. Gerry observed this and shouted : 

“Don’t do that! We’re escaped prisoners! \Ye’re 
Irish and American. Don’t ! ” 


THE RAID ON THE SCHLOSS 


327 


His voice carried ; and the English pilot delayed with 
his match. If any German was near, he did not evidence 
his presence. If any of the enemy flyers had noticed the 
descent of the English biplane, probably they had seen, 
the black-crossed machine following it down. So Gerry 
and the English pilot stood undisturbed, estimating each 
other in the moonlight. A machine-gun bullet had grazed 
the Englishman’s head; but he was fast recovering from 
the shock. Gerry adjusted a first-aid bandage to stay the 
blood. 

“Your ship’s all right?” Gerry asked. 

“ Look at it.” 

“Looks all right; and bombs!” Gerry cried out, dis- 
covering a pair of bombs still hanging in the racks. “ You 
came down with bombs on ! ” 

“I was gone — part the time,” the Englishman ex- 
plained. “ Thought I’d released ’em.” 

Gerry was not finding fault. Bombs he had ; and, to 
take the place of the German training machine, here was 
a ship with engine undamaged, and which could fly again, 
and quite capable — after its bombs were used — of bear- 
ing three men and a girl. Wisely had Gerry determined 
that night not to try to guide fate. Events unforeseeable 
again had him in their grasp. He gazed half a mile away 
where the gray walls of the schloss shimmered in the 
moonlight. 

“ There’s a girl in there,” he said to the English pilot. 
“An American girl we’re going to have out. Will you 
help us ? ” 

“How?” 

“Lay those last two eggs close to the castle,” Gerry 


328 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


motioned to the pair of bombs in the rack. “ That will 
drive ’em all to the cellars ; then keep circling above ’em, 
as if to lay more eggs to keep ’em there. O’Malley and 
I’ll rush the castle.” 

“ You two alone? ” the Englishman asked. 

“ Alone ? ” Gerry laughed. “ Lay your eggs, old hawk ! 
Lay your eggs ; and two’s a crowd for that castle tonight ! 
The only danger’s getting lost in the halls ! But in case 
someone shows, lend us your pistol — we have one. Then 
lay your eggs — close but not on; and keep flying above 
ten minutes more ! ” 

The occupants of the Schloss von Fallenbosch all had 
been aroused many minutes earlier by the burst of the first 
bombs in the city. The detonations, followed immediately 
by the alarm and by the sound of the anti-aircraft guns 
replying, had sent the citizens of Mannheim scurrying to 
their cellars. The allied raiders never attacked intention- 
ally the dwelling places of the city; their objectives were 
solely the chemical and munition works ; but the German 
population — knowing how their own flyers bombed open 
cities indiscriminately — always expected similar assaults 
upon themselves. Moreover, they well knew the diffi- 
culties of identifying objectives from high in the air and 
the greater difficulty of confining attack to a limited area; 
then there were the machine-gun bullets from the aerial 
battle and the bits of shrapnel showering back upon the 
city. 

But the schloss heretofore had been quite removed 
from attack; it was far enough from the city to be in 
small danger from the falling shells of the high angle 
guns. So Oberst-Lieutenant von Fallenbosch and his aids, 


THE RAID ON THE SCHLOSS 


329 


his wife and his servants, when roused merely went to 
their windows and watched the sky curiously and without 
idea of personal danger. If they thought at all about the 
prisoner confined in the cell in the old wing of the schloss 
it was to consider her quite securely held; she, too, was 
roused, undoubtedly, and listening to the sounds which 
told that pilots from the allied forces were fighting within 
a mile or two. But what could she hope from them? 

Ruth, indeed, was aroused. This night was the first 
since she had been taken, upon which the allies had at- 
tacked at Mannheim ; but she had recognized the distinc- 
tive sounds — distant but tremendous — which told of a 
raid. Her window was open but for its bars, and its 
height in the wall, instead of interfering, facilitated in- 
spection of the sky. 

It gave her view over only a limited quadrilateral, of 
course, but every few seconds something happened in that 
space — shells burst, or a searchlight swept across, or a 
rocket flared — more than enough to make her sure that 
a real attack was on. Once she had a glimpse of an air- 
plane upon which a searchlight glared and about which 
shrapnel burst; that meant she had seen a French, or 
English, or an American machine! 

To her, who was about to die, the sight was enormously 
exciting. Not that it brought her shadow of hope for 
herself. For the first five days following her capture she 
had been kept shut up in her cell, seeing only the man who 
brought her food and refused any right of access to any- 
one else. 

At the end of the five days she had been led before a 
military court of three men — von Fallenbosch and two 


330 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


other officers — who accused, tried, and sentenced her 
without permitting her any semblance of defense; she 
was led back and locked up again awaiting the day for the 
execution of the death penalty, which had been left to the 
discretion or the whim of Oberst-Lieutenant von Fallen- 
bosch. 

Her end might come, therefore, upon any day, or upon 
any hour, and without warning; it might not come for 
weeks or months ; her execution might not, indeed, occur 
at all. But a more terrible suspense of sentence scarcely 
could be devised. Its purpose ostensibly was to make her 
disclose facts which the Germans believed that she knew. 

Of course they had held inquisition of her immediately 
upon capture and several times since, but without satis- 
factory result; so they kept her locked up. For reading 
matter she was supplied with German newspapers. 

These proclaimed with constantly increasing boastful- 
ness the complete triumph of the German arms. Every- 
where the Germans had attacked, the allies had crumpled, 
fleeing in disorder, leaving guns by the hundred, prisoners : 
by the tens of thousands. One more stroke and all would 
be over ! Prince Ruprecht would be on the channel ; the 
Crown Prince would be in Paris ! 

Ruth had seen German newspapers before and she had 
known of their blatant distortions of truth, but she had 
never seen anything like the vaunts of those days. These ■■ 
must have, she feared, much foundation in fact. Visions 
of catastrophe to the British Fifth Army, of the rout from 
the Hindenburg line almost to Amiens, and the terrors of 
the retreat haunted her in her solitary days. Was it pos- 
sible that the English were completely crushed and that \ 


THE RAID ON THE SCHLOSS 


331 


the French were helpless? Possible that the American 
army, which now was admitted to have arrived in some 
force, had proved so utterly unfit for European warfare 
that the allies dared not send it into the battle line ? 

The few words spoken to her by the man who attended 
her boasted that such were the facts. She thought of that 
front from Soissons to Reims, where the French lay 
unaware, perhaps, that upon them was soon to come the 
final, overwhelming attack. It must be in the last stages 
of preparation, with the hundreds of thousands of reserve 
troops secretly concentrated by night marches; with the 
thousands of guns and millions of shells secreted and in 
place for another such surprise attack to be delivered in 
some amazing, unforeseen manner as that assault which 
two months ago swept over the plains of Picardy and 
broke the English line. Perhaps already the attack was 
begun; perhaps 

Such terrors held her when she lay sleepless or only 
half drowsing in the dark; they formed the background 
for more personal affrights visualizing her own friends — 
Hubert and Milicent and Mrs. Mayhew, French girls 
whom she had known, and many others. Most particu- 
larly her terror dwelt upon Gerry Hull. She had ventured 
to inquire of the Germans regarding his fate; at first they 
refused information, then they told her he was dead, next 
that he was a prisoner ; and they even supplied her with a 
paragraph from one of their papers boasting of the fact 
and making capital of his capture. 

He was in one of their camps, to be treated by the 
Germans — how? Her dismay would dwell with him; 
then, suddenly considering her own fate, she would sit up, 


332 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


stark, and grasping tight to the sides of her cot. Her 
mother and her sisters in Onarga — would they ever 
know ? Cynthia Gail’s people — what, at last, would they 
learn ? 

A sudden resounding shock, accompanied by a dull roll- 
ing sound, vibrated through the air. A great gun was 
being tested somewhere nearby, Ruth thought. No; they 
would not do that at night. Then it was an explosion at 
the chemical works; something had gone wrong. The 
shocks and the sounds increased. Also they drew nearer. 
Now guns — small, staccato, barking guns — began firing ; 
shells smashed high in the air. Ruth had dragged her 
chair below her window and was standing upon it. Ah ! 
Now she could see the flashes and lights in the sky; an 
air raid was on. There within sight — not a mile off — 
and fighting, were allied machines ! Transcendent exalta- 
tion intoxicated her. 

The bombs bursting in air! 

The stanza of the glorious song of her country sang in 
her soul with full understanding of its great feeling. An 
American prisoner long ago had written those wonderful 
words — written them, she remembered, when lying a 
captive upon an enemy vessel and when fearing for the 
fate of the fort manned by his people. But 

. . . the rocket’s red glare , 

The bombs bursting in air, 

Gave proof through the night 
That our flag was still there. 


THE RAID ON THE SCHLOSS 


333 


The burst of these bombs and the flash of these rockets 
brought the same leaping glory to Ruth. Not far away in 
France her flag yet flew high; her people yet battled, and 
boldly, defiantly, if they could send here over German 
soil such a squadron of the air to this attack. The bombs 
and the guns and the rockets continued. 

Sometimes they swept closer; but swiftly they retreated. 
Now the motor clatter of a single airplane separated itself 
and became louder than all the distant sound. This sound 
seemed to circle and swoop over the schloss; and — Ruth 
swayed at the buffet of a tremendous shock ; she caught at 
the wall to steady herself ; but the wall, too, was quiver- 
ing. A bomb had burst nearby; near enough, indeed, to 
destroy some of the building, for through the tremors 
of the detonation she heard the crash of falling walls, the 
yells and screams of terror. 

Ruth, steadying herself, realized that this attack might 
mean her destruction ; but defiant triumph filled her. The 
airplane which was circling the schloss was one of the 
allies ; the booming clatter of its motor as it returned was 
completing the panic throughout the schloss. A new erup- 
tion vibrated the walls, blowing down stones, timbers; 
the fury of its detonation battered her. The next might 
bury her in the debris of these walls; but she sang — 
wildly, tauntingly she sang The Star-Spangled Banner. 

The taunt brought no protest. Throughout the schloss 
now was silence. She did not believe that all, or, indeed, 
many of the occupants of the place had been killed. But 
she knew that all who were alive were hiding in the 
cellars. 

The increasing roar of the airplane motor as the 


334 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


machine swept back on its orbit of return struck through 
her pangs of awe at the possible imminence of her annihila- 
tion ; but through them she sang, and this time the motor 
roar rose to its loudest and diminished without the shock 
of another bomb. 

One had been dropped, perhaps, and had failed to 
explode, or the pilot had found himself not quite in the 
position he had desired. The diminuendo of his motor 
noise continued only for a few moments, however; it 
altered to a crescendo, warning of the approach. But now 
other sounds, closer and within the schloss, seized Ruth’s 
attention. 

Her name echoing in the stone halls — “Ruth! Ruth 
Alden ! Where are you ? ” 

Was she mad? Was this a wild fantasy of her excite- 
ment, a result of her long terror? Was this her failure to 
hold her reason at the approach of fate? It seemed to be 
not merely her name, but Gerry’s voice. She could not 
answer, but she could sing — sing The Star-Spangled 
Banner 

And the rocket's red glare , 

The bombs bursting in air 

Her voice seemed to guide the voices without. “ Ruth ! 
Ruth Alden ! Are you all right ? We’re here ! ” 

“ Gave proof through the night ” she sang, “ that the 
flag was still there ” 

Now voices — unmistakable voices — answered her; 
and she cried out to guide them. Gerry called to her, his 
voice wondrous with triumph and joy. He was there at 



Gerry was there at the door of her cell ; another man was 

with him; a friend 



* 





















































4 


































♦ 

4 










* 

















































































THE RAID ON THE SCHLOSS 


335 


the door of her cell ; another man was with him; a friend. 
They were working together with a bar to burst the lock ; 
the friend laughed loudly and was not afraid. Gerry did 
not laugh ; he spoke to her again and again, asking about 
her. She was well ? She was unhurt ? 

Now they had the lock broken; the door open. Gerry 
seized her as she came out ; he kissed her ; he picked her 
up and started to carry her, while she cried to him that 
she was strong and could walk ; could run ; could do any- 
thing now. Anything ! 

The roar of the airplane continued overhead; and Ruth 
now knew the trick. It was keeping the Germans below 
while Gerry and his companion went through the schloss. 
Ruth did not yet have complete comprehension of the 
event ; she supposed that Gerry must have escaped from 
Germany long before; that he had rejoined his squadron 
and had come from the allied lines with the raiders that 
night. 

Now they were out of the schloss and Gerry was leading 
her over soft ground — a field brightly lit by the moon. 

“Gerry, I’ve their plan!” Ruth cried to him. “On 
the front between Soissons and Reims ; their next attack ! 
I know it ” 

He no longer was leading her. He lifted her and 
bundled her against him, quite as he had done once so long 
before. An airplane was approaching; she could hear the 
loud crescendo of its motor; suddenly it ceased and she 
heard only the whir of the airscrew of a machine about to 
land. 

Gerry was speaking to her, but for some reason she 
could not understand what he was saying ; she could hear 


336 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


his words, but they were separate sort of words without 
meaning. He and Mike were lifting her now and lower- 
ing her feet first into a pit — the seat pit of an airplane. 
Mike stepped down into the pit with her and supported her 
there. Gerry was gone from her now, but not far away. 
He was in the pilot’s pit, or just behind it, with the pilot in 
front of him. The motor was roaring again ; the machine 
was moving; it was rising. She was flying! 

Far — far below, when she looked back, she saw a 
strange sheen, which was the moonlight on the ground, 
with a twisting, brighter strip dividing it. 

“ That,” she tried to say to the man holding her in his 
lap, “that’s the Rhine?” 

He tried very hard to hear her, and she supposed that 
the same thing must be the matter with him as was the 
trouble with her when Gerry spoke to her on the ground. 
Only slowly she realized that she could not even hear her 
own voice for the noise of the motor. 

She looked back to the other pit and saw Gerry’s face; 
he waved at her and she waved back ; then she sank upon 
the shoulder of the man holding her, and she lost con- 
sciousness. 

Many times while that English bombing biplane — 
weighted now by three men and a girl instead of by two 
men and bombs — made the journey to the allied lines, 
Ruth stirred to semi-wake fulness. The swaying and the 
rising and the falling of the airplane as it rode the cur- 
rents of the air made it seem to Ruth that she was upon a 
ship at sea — upon the Ribot. At other times the motion 
seemed merely the buoyancy following the sinking of sen- 
sations in a dream. Afterwards she remembered sitting 


THE RAID ON THE SCHLOSS 


337 


up, wide-eyed and collected in mind, and gazing down 
upon the moonlit ground ; but at the time these occasions 
gave no reaction. 

She remembered that Gerry waved to her many times 

— every time she turned. Complete consciousness returned 
to her, however, only when she found herself no longer 
rising, and sinking, or swaying to right and left, with all 
sound overwhelmed by motor noises. She was upon a 
cot then ; it was steady, and soft, and marvelously com- 
fortable; and extremely kind people were caring for her 

— one of them an American girl. 

Mrs. Mayhew was there, and George Byrne, and others, 
who identified her. Also, of course, there was Gerry. It 
was he who introduced to her two strange officers — one 
French and one American — and it was Gerry who said: 
“ These are officers of our intelligence division, Ruth. 
Tell them what you can; then everyone will leave you 
alone to rest. Your work will be done.” 

So she told them, summoning all her strength to repeat 
everything correctly and in detail; and when she had 
finished she answered their questions for more than an 
hour. The next day again they questioned her. The 
attack upon the Soissons-Reims front was not yet begun, 
they told her. Did they believe her? she asked. 

It was not the business of the intelligence officers to 
express either belief or incredulity; their task was simply 
to ascertain what she knew, or believed that she knew ; to 
check her recital over with discovered facts about her; 
to add her reports to the others, both confirming and con- 
flicting; and to pass the report on. 

Ruth herself was passed on the next day and requisi- 


338 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


tioned by other men. Then she was taken to Paris and 
was left, undisturbed by further examinations, to rest in 
a bed in a little private room at one of the hospitals. She 
could not quite determine, during those first days that she 
was detained there, whether she was in fact under a sort 
of observational arrest or whether the constant care which 
she received was solely to promote the return of her 
strength. 

For a semi-collapse had come — collapse of only physi- 
cal powers. Her mind was ceaselessly active — too active, 
the doctor told her. Sometimes at night she could not 
sleep, but demanded that she be allowed to rise, and dress, 
and go to the intelligence officers, or have them come to 
her, so she could tell them her whole story again in a way 
they must believe. 

If she could only make them see how Adler had looked; 
if she could make them hear how his voice had sounded 
when he had spoken of that Soissons-Reims front, they 
would not doubt her at all. If she could speak with Gerry 
Hull again, perhaps he could help make them believe 
her. But Gerry Hull was with his squadron. Only 
women were about Ruth now, and doctors, and wounded 
men. So, day after day, she was kept in bed awaiting the 
attack which — as all the world knows — came on the 
twenty-seventh of May and against the French on the 
front from Soissons to Reims. 

The day the great assault began Ruth demanded to get 
up, and — it seemed until that day that someone must 
have doubted her — at last she was permitted to do as she 
pleased. So she returned to the Rue des Saints Peres and 
to her old rooms with Milicent ; she wore again the khaki 


THE RAID ON THE SCHLOSS 


339 


uniform which she had worn in Picardy; and, after read- 
ing the communiques that night, she applied for active 
duty as an ambulance driver. 

That day the Germans had swept the French, in one 
single rush, from the Chemin des Dames ; the enemy were 
over the Aisne. Back, back; everywhere the French, as 
the British in Picardy, were driven back, yielding guns by 
the hundred, prisoners by the tens of thousands. The 
Boche were over the Vesle now; they had Fismes. God! 
Again they were upon the Marne! Could nothing stop 
them? Still they were rushing onward, a broken army 
before them. 

Ruth was in Paris, where talk of a sort which she had 
never heard in France before was upon everyone’s lips. 
France had given all and the Germans yet advanced. 
Their guns hourly roared louder. Four years ago, to be 
sure, their guns were heard as plainly in the Paris streets ; 
four years ago the German field gray had come even 
closer; four years ago the government had abandoned 
Paris and prepared, even though Paris were taken, to fight 
and fight. But that was four years ago and the French 
army was young and unspent; Britain, then, had barely 
begun to come in. France had gathered all her strength, 
and, in her mighty hour at the Marne, had hurled back 
the enemy, “ saving ” Paris ! 

What mockery was that memory this day ! Here, after 
the four years and the spending of French and British 
strength, the Germans were at the gates again only more 
numerous and more confident than before. 

Ruth stayed alone in her room during a lone afternoon 
writing to Cynthia Gail’s father and mother a full con- 


340 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


fession of all that she had done. Her whole enterprise, 
so hopefully taken up, had failed, she said. She related 
what she had tried to do; indeed, in defense of herself, 
she related how she had succeeded in entering Germany 
and in learning something of the German plan for the 
great drive which was now overwhelming the world; 
but she had failed to bring back any proof which was 
required to convince the army that the information she 
had gained was dependable. So she felt that she had 
played Cynthia Gail’s part for no gain ; she had no great 
achievement to offer Cynthia’s parents in recompense for 
the wrong which she had done them. 

She sealed and posted this, and now, at last, wrote to 
her own mother fully of what she had done. Again the 
despair of the day seized her. She wandered the streets 
where men — men who had not been in the fighting during 
the four years — were talking of the allies taking up a 
new line south of Paris and holding on there somehow 
until America was ready. But when such talk went about 
Ruth gazed at the eyes of the French who had been 
through the years of battle; and she knew that, if the 
Germans won now, the French could do no more. 

Ever increasing streams of the wounded were flowing 
back into Paris ; and through the capital began spreading 
the confusion of catastrophe nearby. The mighty emer- 
gency made demand upon the services of those refused 
only a few hours earlier; and Ruth left Paris that night 
upon the driving seat of a small ambulance. The next 
morning — it was the first of June — she was close to the 
guns and upon a road where was retreat. 

Retreat? Well, two months ago in Picardy when the 


THE RAID ON THE SCHLOSS 


341 


English had gone back before the Germans, Ruth had 
heard such a concourse to the rear called retreat; so she 
tried to call this retreat- — this dazed, unresisted departure 
of soldiers from before the enemy’s advance. What made 
it worse, they were the French — the poilus whom she 
met. The French! When the British had been broken 
in Picardy and fell back, fighting so desperately, they 
had sacrificed themselves to stay the enemy until the 
arrival of the French! When the French had arrived the 
German advance was stopped; the French had been the 
saviors! But here the French were going back; and the 
British could not, in turn, come to save them. 

These poilus did not expect it ; they had ceased, indeed, 
to expect anything. For the first time, as the poilus 
looked at her, she saw the awfulness of hopelessness in 
their eyes. Four years they had fought from Maubeuge 
to the Marne ; to the Aisne ; in the Champagne they had 
attacked and gained; at Verdun they had stood alone; 
this year at Kemmel they had sacrificed themselves and 
held on only to meet at last, and in spite of all, the over- 
whelming disaster. 

Ruth tried to cry a word or two of cheer when a man 
saw and saluted her; but her cry choked in her throat. 
These men were spent; they were fought out; beaten. 
And just behind them, at Chateau-Thierry, whence they 
had fled, was the Prussian guard coming on with these 
beaten men between them and Paris. 

Ruth sat, half dizzy, half sick, at the wheel of the little 
car, forcing it forward by these beaten men when the 
road offered a chance. She was maneuvering toward a 
crossroad ; and as she approached it she noticed the French 


342 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


no longer trudging to the rear; they were halted now; 
and as Ruth passed them and reached the direct road to 
Chateau-Thierry she found them lined up beside the road, 
waiting. Officers were clearing the way farther down; 
and as someone halted Ruth’s car she stood up and stared 
along the rise of ground to the' south. 

A sound was coming over, borne by the morning 
breeze — a sound of singing in loud, confident, boasting 
notes. Three notes, they were, three times repeated — 
the three notes which were blown on the bugles in Berlin 
when the kaiser or princes of the royal house were coming; 
three blatant, bragging notes which Ruth had learned a 
year before to mean, “ Over there ! ” 

For the Yanks are coming; the Yanks are coming, 

The drums rum-tumming everywhere. 

Ruth caught to the side of the ambulance and held on 
tight. American voices ; thousands of them ! American 
men ; American soldiers singing ! Americans coming into 
this battle — coming forward into this battle, singing! 
Swinging ! She could see them now as they wound about 
the hill — see the sun flashing on their bayonets, and the 
fine, confident swing — the American swing — of their 
ranks as they approached. 

The Yanks are coming; the Yanks are coming . . . 

And we won't go hack till it's over, over here! 

Ruth leaped up and screamed aloud with joy. 

“ What is it, Mademoiselle ? ” one of the dazed poilus 
inquired. 


THE RAID ON THE SCHLOSS 


343 


“The Americans are coming! Our men are here! 
Our Americans! The Yanks — the Yanks are coming!” 
she shouted it in the rhythm of the song. 

What had seized her that day upon the Ribot when she 
saw the Starke come up and Gerry told her it was Ameri- 
can ; what had thrilled through her that night she arrived 
in France; what had stirred throughout her that morning 
near Mirevaux when the English officer called out to her, 
“ Good old America/ * and she watched the English march 
off to die; what had come when the French at last arrived 
before Amiens; even that ecstasy of the bombs bursting 
over Mannheim when she had sung The Star-Spangled 
Banner and Gerry Hull had found her; all those together 
surged through her combined and intensified a thousand- 
fold. 

And this came not to her alone. It had come, too, to 
the French — the French who had been falling back in 
flight — yes, in flight, one could say it now — knowing 
that the Americans were behind them, but expecting noth- 
ing of those Americans. Why they had expected nothing, 
they did not know. At this moment it was incredible 
that — only the instant before — they had been in total 
despair. 

The Yanks are coming; the Yanks are coming! 

They were marines who were coming; they were so 
close that Ruth could see their uniforms; American 
marines, who marched past her singing — swinging — on 
their way to kill and to die ! For they were going to kill 
— and to die. They knew it; that was why they sang as 


344 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


they did; that was why they were so sure — so boastfully, 
absolutely sure ! 

. . . . send the word; send the word to beware! 

It was American; nothing else! No other men in the 
world could have gone by so absolutely sure of them- 
selves, singing — swinging — like that. And oh, Ruth 
loved them ! Her people ; only a few, indeed, as men were 
reckoned in this war; but such men! Still singing — 
swinging — they swept by, drawing after them a vortex of 
the French, who, a few moments before, had been aban- 
doning the battle. They were all past now, the Americans ; 
oh, how few they had been to face the German army with 
Paris and all the fate of France behind them. 

A few miles on — it could not have been farther — the 
Americans met the Germans ; and what they did there in 
the woods near the tiny town of Meaux came to Ruth in 
wonderful fashion. The battle, which each hour — each 
moment through that terrible morning — had been 
steadily coming nearer and nearer; the battle ceased to 
approach. There was no doubt about it ! The fighting, 
furious twice over and then more furious, simply could 
not get closer. Now the battle was going back! The 
marines — the American marines, sent in to stop the gap 
and hold the Paris road — had not merely delayed the 
Prussian advance ; they had halted it and turned it back ! 

That night Ruth learned a little of the miracle of the 
American marines from one of the men who had fought. 
He had been brought back, badly wounded, and for a 
time, while her ambulance^ was held up, Ruth was able to 
administer to the man, and he talked to her. 


THE RAID ON THE SCHLOSS 


345 


“ Three miles, we threw ’em back, Miss ! Not much, 
three miles, but in the right direction. They asked us to 
delay ’em. Delay ’em ; hell .... excuse me, 
Miss.” 

“Oh, that’s all right,” Ruth cried. “Oh, that’s fine! 
Say it again — our way!” 

“That’s all they asked us; to delay ’em. I was right 
near Wise” — Wise was the lieutenant colonel — “when 
we got our orders. We was to get in touch with the 
Germans and hold up their advance as long as we could ; 
and then retreat to a prepared position. 

“‘Retreat?’ Wise yelled. ‘Retreat? Hell! We’ve 
just come!’ Well, Miss, we got in touch! Oh, we got in 
touch, all right; touched ’em with bayonets and butts. 
They couldn’t like it. Couldn’t quite believe at first; 
didn’t think it was true ; so we had to prove it to ’em, you 
see. Three miles back toward Berlin; not much; but — 
you admit — in the right direction.” 

“ I admit it,” Ruth said; and — the boy was very badly 
hurt — she kissed him before she climbed back to her 
seat. 

The next day, when she at last allowed herself to rest, 
she wrote a letter to Gerry. She had no idea where he was ; 
so she addressed him in care of his old squadron. She 
had no definite notion of their present relations; what he 
had said, or what she herself had said, during and follow- 
ing their flight back to France, she simply did not know; 
for during that time she had dreamed extreme, incredible 
things, which, nevertheless, fastened themselves upon her 
with such reality that she could not now separate, with 
any certainty, the false from the true. 


346 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


That he had come for her, boldly, recklessly; that he 
and a companion had succeeded in taking her from the 
schloss and bringing her back with them were facts which 
might be the foundation of — anything between Gerry 
and herself or of no more than had existed before. 

Yet something — a good deal — had existed at the time 
they had parted on the Rue des Saints Peres before she 
went to Switzerland. That was quite a lot to return to, 
and the only safe feeling to assume in him was that which 
he had confessed to her there. So she wrote this day 
chiefly of the marvel which she had seen — the miracle of 
the arrival of the Americans, which, as the world already 
knew, had saved Paris. 

She received reply from him after two weeks — a brief 
yet intimate note, telling her that her wonderful letter had 
welcomed him just ten minutes ago, when he had returned 
from a patrol. He had only a minute now ; but he must 
reply at once. 

■ 

I want to tell you, Ruth, that you have the right to feel 
that your work contributed to the arrival of our marines 
at the right moment, at the right place. You are familiar 
enough with war now to know that troop dispositions 
must be made far ahead. Your information was, of 
course, not the only warning to reach the general staff 
that the attack was to come where it did. But I am now 
permitted to tell you that your information was believed 
to be honest ; therefore it had weight, and its weight was 
sufficient undoubtedly to make our command certain, a 
few hours earlier than they otherwise might have been 
certain, of the direction of the German attack; and, 
throughout the front, reserves were started to the threat- 
ened points a few hours sooner. Yours ever, 


Gerry. 


THE RAID ON THE SCHLOSS 


347 


The day after Ruth' received this the Germans started 
their attack of the fifteenth of July; three days later the 
allied counter attack was striking in full force and the 
armies of the German Crown Prince were fighting for 
their lives against the French and Americans, to get back 
out of the Marne “ pocket.” Then, in the north, the English 
struck and won their greatest victories. It was August ; 
September, and still, from Switzerland to the sea, the 
allies advanced ; the Germans went back. And still from 
across the sea, three hundred thousand American soldiers 
arrived monthly. 


CHAPTER XXII 
“The War’s Over” 

R UTH was working in a canteen with the American 
army now — or, rather, with one of the American 
armies. Her particular army occupied the bending front 
about the St. Mihiel salient, east of Verdun. Gerry — she 
heard of him frequently, but from him only when the 
chances of the mails brought letters along the lines of the 
shifting armies — Gerry was doing combat flying again 
with the American forces operating farthest to the west. 
She was close behind an active battle front again, as by 
secret night marches the American First Army with its 
tanks and artillery concentrated on the south side of the 
salient from Apremont to Pont-a-Mousson. 

Ruth went about glowing with the glory of the gather- 
ing of the fighting men of her people. Many times when 
she looked up at the approach of a tall, alert figure in 
pilot’s uniform, her heart halted with hope that Gerry had 
come among the flyers to aid in this operation ; then she 
heard, with final definiteness, that he was still kept at his 
combat work farther west. The gathering of the army, 
however, brought Hubert Lennon. 

Ruth had not seen him since March; and his manner of 
reappearance was characteristic. On the evening of the 
eleventh of September, the sense of the impending had 
reached the climax which forewarned of immediate 
348 


THE WAR’S OVER 


349 


events ; and the troops who were to go “ over the top ” at 
some near hour, and also the support divisions which were 
to follow, were being kept close to their commands. The 
canteen where Ruth was working was deserted long before 
the usual time, and Ruth was busy putting away dishes 
when someone entered and coughed, apologetically, to 
attract her attention. She glanced up to see a spare young 
man in the uniform of an ambulance driver and wearing 
thick spectacles. His face, was in the shadow, with only 
his glasses glinting light until he took off his cap and said : 

“ Hello, Miss Alden.” 

Ruth dropped the dish she was holding. “Hubert! 
I didn’t know how much I’ve needed to see you ! ” And 
she thrust both her hands across the counter and seized 
his hand and squeezed it. 

He flushed ruddy under his brown weather-beatenness, 
and she held tighter to the hand he was timidly attempting 
to draw away — still her shy, self-effacing Hubert. By 
hailing her by her own name, he had informed her at 
once that he knew all about her ; and he had not assumed 
to replace his former familiar “ Cynthia ” with “ Ruth.” 

“ You — no one’s needed me,” he denied, more abashed 
by the warmness of his welcome. 

“You frightened me about you at first, Hubert,” she 
scolded him, “when you went away and — except for a 
couple of postcards — you never sent me a word. Then 
I heard of you through other people ” 

“ Gerry ? ” 

“Yes; Gerry or Mrs. Mayhew; and I found you were 
always all right.” 

He winced, and she reproached herself for not remem- 


350 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


bering how terribly sensitive he was about not being in 
the combat forces. “I certainly never expected you’d 
worry about me.” 

“ But you’ve been wounded ! ” she cried, observing now 
as he shifted a little that he moved as do those who have 
been hurt in the hip. “ Hubert, what was it and when? ” 
“Air raid; that’s all. Might have got it in Paris — or 
London.” 

“ Look at me; where and when? ” 

“ Well, then, field hospital near Fismes early in August. 
I’m quite all right now.” 

Ruth’s eyes suddenly suffused. She had heard about 
that field hospital and how the German flyers had bombed 
it again and again, strewing death pitilessly, and how the 
attendants upon the wounded had worked, reckless of 
themselves, in an inferno. “Hubert, you were there?” 
“ That was nothing to where you’ve been, I reckon.” 

“ I’ve never thanked you,” Ruth replied, remembering, 
“ for not telling on me that time you caught me on the 
train from Bordeaux.” 

“ How’d you know I caught you then? ” 

Ruth told him. He looked down. “ I was pretty sure 
on the Ribot that you weren’t Cynthia, Miss Alden,” he 
said, “ but I was absolutely sure I wasn’t doing anything 
risky — to the country — in keeping still. By the way, 
I’ve a letter from Cynthia’s people for you.” 

He reached into a pocket and Ruth studied him, won- 
deringly. “ How long have you been here, Hubert ? ” 

“ Oh, three or four days.” 

“ How long have you known where I was ? ” 

He hesitated. “Why, almost all the time — except 


THE WAR’S OVER 


351 


during the retreat in March, and then when you were in 
Switzerland and in Germany — I’ve known fairly well 
where you were.” 

“ Why didn't you come to me four days ago? ” 

“Didn't have this till today.” He produced a letter 
postmarked Decatur, Illinois, and in the familiar hand- 
writing of Cynthia Gail’s father. “ You see, after Gerry 
brought you back and everything was out, I thought the 
only right thing — to you, Miss Alden, as well as to them 
— was to write Cynthia's people. I knew you would, of 
course, but I thought you wouldn't say, about yourself, 
what you should. So I did it. Here’s what they say.” 

He handed the letter to her, and Ruth withdrew nearer 
a lamp to read it. They were still quite alone in the corner 
of the canteen, and as Ruth read the letter written by the 
father of the girl whose part she had played, tears of 
gratitude and joy blinded her — gratitude not alone to 
the noble-hearted man and woman in Decatur, but quite 
as much to the friend who had written of her to them 
with such understanding as to make possible this letter. 

She came back to him with tears running down her 
cheeks and she seized his hand again. “Oh, Hubert, 
thank you ; thank you ! I don’t think anything ever made 
me so happy in all my life.” 

“You know Byrne’s dead, do you?” 

“No! Is he? He died from that ” 

“ Not from that, Miss Alden. He completely recovered. 
He was killed cleanly leading his platoon in the fighting 
on the Vesle. He had written Cynthia's people about you 
forgiving you, you see.” 

Hubert turned to the door and opened it and gazed out 


352 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


through the dark about the hills and woods where that 
night the hundreds of thousands of Americans of the 
First Army lay. “ Funny about us being back here, isn’t 
it?” he said, with the reflective philosophy which he was 
likely to employ when dismissing one subject. “ I’ve been 
thinking about it a lot these last days, seeing our fellows 
everywhere — so awful many of them. Everyone of ’em 
— or their fathers — came from this side first of all be- 
cause they didn’t like the way things were going in 
Europe, and they wanted to get away from it. But they 
couldn’t get away from it by just leaving it. They had 
to come back after all to settle the trouble. That’s an 
interesting idea, when you think of it, isn’t it?” 

‘‘Yes,” said Ruth. “Hubert ” 

“ How does Gerry feel about being an American now ? ” 
“I’ve not talked with Gerry for more than three 
months.” 

“Being an American,” Hubert mused, “being an 
American is some privilege these days — even if you only 
drive an ambulance. To be Gerry Hull now ! ” He gazed 
at Ruth, who looked away, but who could not stop color 
suffusing her face under his challenge. He glanced about 
the room and observed that they were quite alone. 

“I’ve wondered a good bit recently, Miss Alden,” he 
said in a queer, repressed matter-of-fact way, “ whether 
you might prefer — or might not prefer — to have me tell 
you that I love you. You must know it, of course; and 
since it’s a fact, sometimes it seemed that we might be 
better friends hereafter if I just told you that fact. You 
know I’ve not any silly idea that you could care for me. 
No; don’t please!” he stopped her, when she attempted 


THE WAR’S OVER 


353 


to speak. “ We’ll not arrive anywhere except by sticking 
to facts ; we’re friends ; may we ever be ! ” 

“O, we will be, Hubert ! ” 

“ Then it is better that I’ve told you I love you.” 

“But you mustn’t!” 

“ I can’t control that, Miss Alden.” 

“ Mayn’t I be Ruth even now ? ” 

“ Ruth, then; yes, I like that. Good night, Ruth.” 

“You must go? But tomorrow you’ll ” 

“Tomorrow no one knows where any one’ll be. But 
it’s been great to see you again.” 

“And you, Hubert! Good night; good luck, and — 
thank you again a thousand times.” 

He went; and on the morrow, as everyone knows, the 
American First Army went “over the top,” and at night 
the St. Mihiel salient, which had stuck like a Titanic thorn 
in the flank of France for four years, was wiped out; the 
American guns in the next days engaged the guns of the 
outer fortresses of Metz. 

In the stream of casualties, which was the American 
cost of the victory, Hubert was swept to the rear. Ruth 
read his name cited in the orders of a certain day for 
extraordinary coolness and devotion in caring for the 
wounded under fire. He himself was wounded again 
severely, and Ruth tried to visit him at the hospital to 
which he was sent; but she was able only to learn that 
he was convalescing and had been transferred to the 
south of France. 

She read, a little later, another familiar name — Sam 
Hilton. There might be other Sam Hiltons in the army; 
on the other hand, she was familiar enough with the 


354 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


swiftness with which the draft had cleared out Class I in 
America, to be certain that the Sam Hilton for whom she 
had worked in January must now be somewhere in the 
American army, and the particular Sam Hilton who was 
mentioned was a corporal in an Illinois regiment which 
had been most heavily engaged in the desperate fighting 
in the forest of the Argonne. He was awarded — Ruth 
read — the military medal for extraordinary bravery 
under fire and for display of daring and initiative which 
enabled him to keep together a small command after the 
officers were killed and finally to outwit and capture a 
superior German force. 

Somehow it sounded like Sam Hilton to Ruth. “ He 
got in the army and got interested; that’s all,” she said 
to herself as she reread the details. “He wouldn’t let 
anyone bluff him; and — yes, that sounds just like Sam 
Hilton after he got interested.” 

This was late in the fall ; the Argonne then was cleared ; 
and by a shift of the divisions who were pressing con- 
stantly after the retreating Germans, Ruth found herself 
in the last week of October attached to the American units 
fighting their way to Sedan. Infantrymen of the Illinois 
regiment, which possessed the decorated Sam Hilton, 
came into the canteen and Ruth asked about him. Every- 
one seemed to know him. Yes, he came from Chicago, 
and had been in the real estate business; he was in a 
battalion which recently had been heavily engaged again, 
but now was in reserve and resting nearby. 

Ruth visited, upon the next afternoon, the little, just 
recaptured French village about which the battalion was 
billeted ; and right on the main street she met — medal and 


THE WAR’S OVER 


355 


all — Sam Hilton. He was seated before a cottage and 
was very popular with and intent upon the villagers 
gathered about; so Ruth had a good look at him before 
he observed her. In his trim uniform and new chevrons 
— he was sergeant now — he never looked “ classier” in 
his life. 

He appeared to have appointed himself a committee of 
one to investigate the experiences of the inhabitants of 
that village during the four years of German occupa- 
tion, and he had found an interpreter — a French boy 
of thirteen or fourteen — who was putting into rather 
precarious English the excited recitals of the peas- 
ants. 

Ruth approached when one series of translation was 
coming to an end, and Sergeant Sam Hilton looked up 
and recognized her. “Why, hello; you here, too, Miss 
Alden?” 

He had been long enough in France so that he was not 
really much amazed to encounter anyone. “Come here 
and listen to what the Huns been doing to these people, 
Miss Alden,” he invited her, after she had replied to his 
greeting. “ Say, do you know that’s the way they been 
acting for four years? We’re a fine bunch, I should say, 
letting that sort of stuff go on for three years and over 
before we stepped in. What was the matter with our 
government, anyway — not letting us know. I tell 
you ” 

It took him many minutes to express properly his 
indignation at the tardiness of the American declaration 
of war. Yet certain features of the situation enormously 
perplexed him. 


356 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“ What gets my goat/’ he confessed, “ is how we’re so 
blamed popular, Miss Alden. We Americans are well 
liked — awful well liked, ain’t we?” 

“We certainly are,” Ruth agreed. 

“ We’re liked not just as well as the English, far as I 
can see, but better. Yes, better. That certainly gets my 
goat; out of it three years; in it, one; and not really in it 
all of one yet; and we’re — top hole. That’s a British 
expression, Miss Alden; means absolutely it.” 

“Yes,” said Ruth; “I’ve heard it.” 

“Well, we’re that; top hole. How does it happen? 
What’ve we done that others ain’t that makes them feel 
so about Americans over here ? ” 

Ruth could not answer. She could only accept, at last, 
an invitation to lunch with him the first time they met 
again in any city where they had restaurants. 

The perplexity which Sam Hilton felt was being shared 
by many and many another American in those days which 
swiftly were sweeping toward the end of the war; and not 
least among the perplexed was Gerry Hull. 

That strange morning had arrived upon which battle 
was to be entered against the Germans, as usual, and to 
be continued until eleven o’clock; after eleven was to be 
truce. Gerry was on patrol that morning, flying a single- 
seater Spad in a formation which hovered high in the 
morning sky to protect the photographic machines and the 
fire-control airplanes which were going about their busi- 
ness as usual over the German lines, taking pictures of 
the ground, and, by wireless, guiding the fire of the 
American guns. 

The American guns were going it, loud and fast, and 


THE WAR’S OVER 


357 


the German guns were replying ; they might halt at eleven, 
but no love was being lost upon this last day. 

About the middle of the morning German combat 
planes appeared. Gerry was among the first to sight them 
and dash forward. Seven or eight American machines 
followed him; and for the swift seconds of the first 
attack they kept somewhat to formation. Then all line 
was lost in a diving, tumbling, looping, climbing, side- 
slipping maelstrom of machines fighting three miles above 
the ground. Each pilot selected a particular antagonist, 
and Gerry found himself circling out of the melee while 
he maneuvered for position with a new triplane Fokker, 
whose pilot appeared to have taken deep dislike for him. 

The German was a good flyer — an old hand in a new 
machine, Gerry thought. At any rate, Gerry could obtain 
neither the position directly above him or just behind him 
— “on the tail.” They fired at each other several times 
passing, but that was no way to hit anything. Several 
times, of course, they got widely separated — once for an 
interval long enough to give Gerry chance to aid another 
American who was being pressed by two Germans, and 
to send one of the Germans down out of control. Then 
Gerry’s particular enemy appeared and they were at it 
again. 

Gerry climbed better now and got above him; Gerry 
dived, and the German, waiting just the right time, side- 
slipped and tumbled out from underneath. Gerry checked 
his dive and got about behind him. Gerry was coming 
upon him fast, behind, and just a trifle below — in almost 
perfect firing position — when he saw the German look 
back and hold up his hand. Gerry held his fire, and, 


358 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


coming up closer, he saw the German jerk his hooded 
head and point groundward. Gerry gazed down upon a 
stark and silent land. 

The spots of shells were gone. Where they had erupted 
and flung up great billows of sand, and where their smoke 
had puffed and floated, the surface lay bland and yellow 
under the morning sun. Truce had come — truce which 
the German pilot in the Fokker alongside signalized by 
wave of his hand. Gerry raised his hands from his gun 
lanyard, and, a little dazedly, waved back, and he let the 
German steer away. Gerry swung his own ship about, 
and, flying low over an anomalous land of man-specks 
walking all about in the open, he shut off his motor and 
came down in his airdrome. 

Silence — except for voices and motor noises — silence ! 
And nothing particular to do or to expect; nothing im- 
mediately threatening you; death no longer probable. 
Truce! 

Gerry joined the celebrants; but soon he retreated to 
the refuge of his quarters, where he was alone. It was 
rather confounding suddenly to find yourself with the 
right to expect to live. To live! What amazing impa- 
tience this morning aroused. He had leave to depart in 
two hours to spend a week wherever he pleased; and 
while the minutes dallied and dragged, he reread the last 
letter he had received from Ruth, which had arrived four 
days ago. She had mentioned that she expected to be sent 
to Paris, so Gerry found place upon the Paris train; and, 
upon arriving in the city, he took a taxi to the Rue des 
Saints Peres. 

The little French girl, who opened the door of the 


THE WAR’S OVER 


359 


familiar pension, said, yes, Mademoiselle Alden was in 
Paris and, also, at that moment actually in her room. 
Gerry entered the parlor and sat down; but he could not 
remain still while he waited. He arose and went about 
staring vacantly at the pictures upon the walls, seeing no 
one of them, but hearing every slightest sound in the 
house which might mean that Mademoiselle Alden was 
coming downstairs. He heard light footfalls upon the 
floor above, which, he decided, were hers as she moved 
about, dressing; and he wondered what dress she was 
putting on — the pretty yellow dress which she had worn 
at Mrs. Corliss’ or the uniform she had worn upon the 
retreat from Mirevaux. He liked her in both ; he didn’t 
care which she wore, if she would only come. 

He heard her step on the stair ; he started to the door, 
impulsively. But the little French girl might be about; 
so he drew back to the center of the room and stood 
there until Ruth appeared. Then his arms went out to 
her and, regardless of who might hear, he rushed to her, 
calling her name. 

She was small and slender and round and with her face 
almost white from some absurd uncertainty about him 
and with her eyes wide. She wore neither the beautiful 
yellow gown nor the uniform but a simple blue dress of 
the sort which girls wear in the morning when they go 
out, or in the afternoon, but which they do not put on 
particularly for an evening call. Gerry was not critical ; 
he thought the dress mightily became her ; but it made her 
bewilderingly demure. 

“What is it, Ruth? You’re not glad I came right to 
you ? ” 


360 


RUTH OF THE U. S. A. 


“Glad! Oh, Gerry, my soul’s been singing since I 
heard your voice down here and I knew that you’d come 
and you’re safe; and the war r s over ! ” 

He had her in his arms, her slight, vibrant figure close 
to him, her eyes turned up to his. Gently — gently as 
upon that time when she disengaged his fingers from his 
clasp of her shoulders — she raised her hands and put 
them upon his breast and thrust him back. The touch of 
her hands and the tenderness of her strength sent rills of 
delight racing through him, but he did not understand 
them. 

“ Ruth, I love you ; can’t you love me ? ” 

“ Love you ! ” Her eyes closed for a moment as though 
she no tonger dared to look at him. Her resistance to 
him had relaxed ; now she thrust back from him again ; but 
he did not permit it. He overpowered her, drawing her 
against him. So she opened her eyes. 

“The war’s over, Gerry.” 

“ Thank God, Ruth ! .... I couldn’t let myself 

even dream of this before, dearest.” 

“ You mustn’t say that ! ” 

“Why not?” 

“We’ll all be going back soon, Gerry — those of us 
who’ve lived — back to what we’ve been before. That’s 
why I kept you waiting so long. I had to change to 
this.” She looked down at her dress and he released her 
a little to glance down also, wonderingly. 

“ Why ? What about it, dear ? ” 

“It’s my own — the only thing of mine you’ve ever 
seen me in; I used to wear this at the office where I 
worked. You know, I told you.” 


“ THE WAR’S OVER 


361 


“ I wondered why I loved you more than ever before, 
Ruth. Oh, silly sweetheart! You think you’re going 
back to an office ! ” He laughed, delightedly. 

“No; we must think the truth, Gerry. We’ve been 
moving in madness through the war, my love ! ” 

“Ah ! You’ve said that ! ” 

“I didn’t mean it! We mustn’t imagine that every- 
thing’s to be changed for us just because we’ve met in 
war and ” 

“And you’ve saved me, Ruth ! ” 

“ You saved me, too ! ” 

“ Oh, we shan’t argue that, dear. But about not being 
changed — well I’m changed incurably and forever, my 
love. I mean that! You’ve done most of the changing 
too. Did you think you’d made me an American only for 
duration of the war?” 

“ But Gerry, we must think. You’ll go home and have 
all your grandfather’s buildings and money and ” 

“You’ll have all, too, and me besides, dear — if you 
want me ? Do you suppose that all these months I haven’t 
been thinking, too ? Do you suppose I’d want you for a 
wife only in war? I want you, Ruth — and I’ll need you 
even more, I think, to help me in the peace to come. But 
that’s not why I’m here. I want you — you — now and 
forever ! Can I have you ? ” 

“ You have me,” Ruth said. “And I — I have you ! ” 
























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